A personal-finance columnist suggests reviewing spending, waiting two days before buying and removing saved card details.
Social-media advertising works through auctions for views. Companies compete for users’ attention, while platforms use likes, searches and clicks to make ads more targeted. Personal-finance educator Max Yong warned in The Sydney Morning Herald that this system can persuade people to buy things they had not planned to purchase.
Australia Post research found that Australians spent a record A$82.6 billion online in 2025, up 14% from a year earlier. In the accompanying survey, 60% of shoppers said they use social media to discover products and one in two had bought something after seeing it there. Among Generation Z, the share was 69%.
Yong said platforms earn money from advertising and collect signals about audience behaviour. He described checking Instagram’s “Your algorithm” page, which correctly identified his interests in Australian rules football, live music and investing. He said he consequently saw ads for nearby concerts and financial products.
The columnist said shopping through social media is not inherently a problem when it saves time. The risk, in his view, is being persuaded to spend on products that are not needed and may soon become clutter. Buy-now-pay-later services can add another incentive. Yong cited a US study that estimated their use increased overall spending by about US$60 a week.
His practical suggestions include reviewing several months of bank statements, saving a product link and waiting two days before deciding, and removing saved card details from websites and devices. He also recommends limiting ad personalization and app tracking in platform settings. If impulse purchases continue, he suggests deleting social-media apps for a while.