Picture this: you open a website — any website. Advertisements for a new book, a popular clothing brand, or anything else that may pique your interest pops up. You click on an ad and immediately, you are taken to a colorful website full of cheap prices and appealing items. A month or two later, you visit that same website, and see ads from the same company; but with completely different items. You click on it and the prices are still the same, but the items have changed completely. This happens month after month, creating the harrowing cycle of microtrends.

In economic terms, a microtrend is defined as a single, short-lived trend that develops in a specific sector. While microtrends are most prominently seen in clothing, recently, it’s been seen in everything from music artists to collectibles. Often, microtrends take old things and renew them to make them seem appealing to today’s market.

It’s hard to recognize the problems with microtrends. It sounds great to never have to feel like everything you own is outdated because of how easy it is to replace it. However, once you see the problem with your own eyes, it’s impossible to deny it.

Microtrends are directly contributing to the escalating environmental crisis. In order to keep up with these ever changing microtrends, companies are producing items in bulk that only end up being used once or twice. These items don’t just disappear once we’re done using them; they usually end up in a landfill. This heightens the increasing levels of waste and pollution. Microtrends are also often fueled by artificial intelligence (AI). AI has recently started to be used in different sectors as a tool to design and market products. AI data centers actively damage the environment with their high energy consumption and water usage.

But really, microtrends aren’t the biggest problem on our hands; they’re just one output of a larger psychological problem. Our attention spans are getting shorter and we are not allowing ourselves to be bored. With the age of social media, we are constantly being hit with new information. This has caused our brains to need constant stimulation — and for many people, buying things is the perfect stimulation. Furthermore, the novelty of microtrends gives us a way to satisfy our boredom. When we’re bored, we automatically think that we need to change something in our life, and microtrends are the easiest and most accessible way to do that.

So, how can we reduce or stop our consumption of microtrends? In my opinion, we need to start consuming more consciously. We have to start thinking through things we buy and stop mindlessly buying everything we see on social media. The next time you want to buy something that you just saw on social media, think about it for a while first. Allow yourself to figure out if you truly like the product or if you simply want to cure your boredom.