More Americans are giving up

The Ipsos Consumer Tracker asks Americans questions about culture, the economy and the forces that shape our lives. Here's one thing we learned this week.
 

Why we asked: We’re in the midst of Lent, safely past dry January and just gave up shopping for a day. So ’tis the season?

What we found: After holding steady for the past two years, we see a bit of a jump in people giving things up. Whether that’s Dry January (10% to 16%), religious reasons (14% to 21%) or even just because (26% to 31%), we seem to be more willing than in previous years to abstain from things. 

Also, 27% said they took part in a day-long economic blackout day as part of a movement to reduce spending called “No Buy 2025” — a complicated set of movements that was maybe co-opted into an anti-President Trump/Elon Musk boycott? There was a 40% to 17% Democrat/Republican split on that. 

In terms of what, exactly, we gave up, that was mostly flat from last year. Alcohol and sweets were the top items we swore off. There was a bit of a bump in those eschewing social media (16% to 23%.) Giving up meat also bumped from 11% to 18%. Last year in the verbatims, “dining out” popped as something we should have included, and being good researchers, we adjusted this year. It came in at 18%.

These have traditionally been my favorite verbatims of the year. I thought it would be hard to top the person who last year gave up “joy,” but this year did not disappoint. We saw some obvious answers like shopping, drugs, weed (but they note, that’s temporary), or unhealthy foods (and one person who wouldn’t help but say they’re vegetarian, and don’t need to give up meat). 

But people are also trying to give up being negative, relationships, volunteering, “[expletive] people,” and “genres of porn” (because all porn would be way too far to go). Perhaps my favorite, or at least the most relatable in all the insanity that is America in 2025: Someone has given up their “daily routine.”