(CNN) — Aria Liu, 17, regularly posts shopping haul videos to her YouTube channel, which has 300,000 subscribers. She films her sprees by displaying a live feed of her laptop screen as she buys up to thousand-dollar shopping carts of clothes and makeup.
“I shop so much more online,” she told CNN. “I don’t know what it is, but when I’m shopping online, money doesn’t feel real.”
Liu’s not alone. Shopping hauls have existed for years, if not decades. But experts say the potent mix of products featured ubiquitously on social media feeds and popping up as algorithm-boosted recommendations; Buy Now, Pay Later programs; and a constant loop of sales has made massive purchases of clothes, cosmetics and more at once all the more common.
It’s not just an online influencer trend: The average number of items per transaction in the Consumer Goods category is the highest it’s been over the past …