If you are a regular TikTok user, chances are you’ve seen countless videos of influencers and regular users alike promoting cheap items for sale on TikTok Shop.
Since September of 2023, TikTok has had its own online shopping platform, on which viewers can buy from sellers who promote their products on the app. TikTok Shop hosts a range of products, from five-dollar sweaters to pricier household appliances.
The most popular products on TikTok Shop seem to be the clothes. A few regular videos are followed by a promotion for trendy and impossibly-cheap clothing items.
But, is TikTok Shop too good to be true? While the clothes may be fashionable and affordable, they’re almost certainly contributing to the problem of fast fashion. Fast fashion is one of the largest sources of environmental pollution and degradation, as well as heavily dependent on sweatshops and child labor in poor countries.
A lot of these clothes are also made out of low quality materials, which is hurting both the environment and your wallet. A lot of those cute cheap sweaters are composed of a high percentage of polyester, which, as a kind of plastic, is less comfortable and lower quality than cotton at best and irritating to the skin at worst. Polyester can also take up to hundreds of years to decompose, so once those clothes go out of style, they’ll likely sit in the landfills for more than a lifetime.
Other lower-quality offerings on the site may not last nearly as long as they should. Because they’re developed incredibly quickly using the cheapest materials and the cheapest labor, they often fall apart very fast. Sustainability at UCLA reports that most fast fashion pieces only last up to 10 washes before they’re ready to be thrown out. So, rather than saving the customer money, they’re really just encouraging more and more purchases to replace the previous ones.
But maybe that’s the point. Fast fashion also encourages us to give in to extreme consumerism. With everything available conveniently right at our fingertips, people are much more willing to make those purchases. And a large portion of the items for sale on TikTok Shop are micro-trends. After wearing them for just a few weeks, people are ready to throw them out and buy into whatever else becomes trendy in the meantime.
But at the same time, it’s important to acknowledge that TikTok Shop is not alone in its flaws. Even traditional stores that are more expensive rely on unethical practices to make money.
“[While I believe that] online storefronts like TikTok Shop and Shein are environmentally and ethically-unfriendly, they do provide cheap alternatives for those who cannot afford to shop at established stores,” sophomore Jessica Hartley said.
While TikTok Shop may be more obviously harmful, the majority of popular brands take part in unethical business practices and, at the very least, TikTok Shop is affordable and is not pretending to be better than it really is.
And, shopping sustainably can be difficult. While it’s easy to tell people to shop at smaller brands or local stores, those retailers are often much more expensive. It’s usually hard to find stores that strike a balance between sustainable and affordable.
“While buying from small businesses should be encouraged, it is the responsibility of those in charge to find environmentally-friendly and ethical solutions to the overpricing of necessary products like clothes,” Hartley said.
At the end of the day, the promises of TikTok Shop are likely too good to be true. But it’s not going anywhere any time soon. Forbes reported that in just December of 2023, $349 million was earned from the platform, illustrating just how popular it’s become among TikTok’s user base since its launch. Until ethical and sustainable fashion become more accessible and affordable, the platform will likely continue its rapid rise.
