Gen Z and the end of frictionless desire.

This morning, I rediscovered a Miu Miu bag from Autumn/Winter 2005. The soft leather, the cool weight of the metal chain. A mix of familiarity and excitement. The quiet thrill of something that had taken time to return.

Shopping has never been easier. And yet, it has never felt emptier. For a decade or so, we’ve built a world of instant access. One-click checkouts, algorithmic discovery, same-day delivery. Touch disappeared from the transaction.

Now, 2025, fatigue is setting in. Average time on social platforms has fallen by nearly 10 percent since its 2022 peak, the steepest decline among young consumers, Gen Z. Seventy percent call influencers “samey” and “basic”. When asked about social shopping, 27 percent of Gen Z-ers describe it as mindless. Many say they slip into a kind of trance, scrolling, tapping, buying without remembering the moment they decided to want. Seventy percent feel guilty after impulse purchases. It’s desire turned mechanical. Repetitive. Dull.

From exhaustion stems a longing for friction. Queuing for hours as a community. Vintage and resale apps like Depop that demand patience and slow rummaging. The quiet ritual of touching fabrics and speaking to another person. Seventy percent of Gen Zs now say shopping in-store feels more luxurious and special than buying online.

To wait, to search, to discover, are rediscovered forms of pleasure. In the digital space, the same pattern repeats. Eighty-five percent of Gen Zs use Pinterest to find products, nearly four in ten visit daily, describing it as quieter, slower space, less dominated by ads and noise. A place where they can be themselves. The comment section has become the best conversation, honest and observant. DMs and Reddit, Inc. threads carry their own kind of depth and importance, unfiltered voices, niche advice, the raw texture of community.

This is not nostalgia. It’s self-protection. Gen Z, young consumers, don’t trust the smooth excitement engineered by algorithms. They are reclaiming what friction can give them. The pause between seeing and wanting, and the time to feel their own intention. Meaning takes time, discovery requires resistance. And desire, to stay alive, needs something to push against.

It’s not difficult to imagine that friction might only be the beginning. If value drifts from money, a quieter economy could take shape. One built on exchange rather than purchase. A pair of jeans for a bag. A conversation for access. A gesture for belonging. In a generation that mistrusts both capital and permanence, meaning can be traded by hand. Ownership gives way to circulation, price to presence. What we can’t afford to buy, we still find ways to share. And connection becomes the currency.

Connection is already the quiet currency of luxury. The best houses never truly lost it. They are returning to what they always knew, that meaning, not reach, is the real measure of value. The 1990’s made luxury aspirational, traded maison for conglomerate, intimacy for image. But beneath the noise, the true foundations remained, craft, time, presence, shared quietly between hands. If anything, one could argue that Gen Z aren’t turning away from luxury - they might be quietly saving it.