As consumer society has evolved, individuals have shifted their focus from ownership to experience. The pleasures of discovering an old book in a corner of a secondhand bookstore, collecting seashells and making crafts with family in a seaside town, or traveling to another city for a stand-up comedy show or concert reflect a quiet change in consumption priorities.

The emphasis has moved from owning goods to the unexpected pleasures of discovery, the warmth of time spent with family and friends, and those moments when laughter releases pent-up emotions and brings people into closer touch with themselves.

These changes are subtly redefining the relationship between people and their lives. Rather than paying merely for the functional value of material goods, people are increasingly finding meaning in consumption through experiences, feelings, and memories.

The meaning and value of consumption for individuals vary across stages of social development. In times of material scarcity, people tended to equate happiness with material possession, as though owning more things meant having a better life. In the era of digital and intelligent technologies, experience itself has become something to acquire.

Algorithms precisely capture users’ preferences, while social media rapidly generates viral spectacles of picture-perfect moments, check-ins, and online sharing. Consumption has also come to function as a marker of identity and a form of social currency. Often without realizing it, people are steered by algorithmic recommendations and drawn toward purchases by online trends. While the rapid growth of experiential consumption is certainly exciting, the concerns lurking beneath the boom should not be overlooked.

The first concern combines “homogenization” with “hollowing out”—experiences become increasingly alike while losing their substance. In some commercial districts, digital transformation has followed standardized, formulaic models, with little meaningful innovation in the settings created for consumers or the immersive experiences on offer. Once a new business format emerges, it is often rapidly copied elsewhere. Photo spots popular on social media proliferate across cities, leaving stores and attractions looking much the same. Experience is reduced to a backdrop for photographs: People travel to get the perfect shot and spend money to “check in,” while emotional value becomes little more than a means of generating online traffic. Consumers arrive full of anticipation, only to leave disappointed, feeling that the experience was nothing special after all.

The second concern combines “uneven quality” with “eroding trust”—disappointing experiences gradually undermine consumers’ confidence. While the integration of culture and tourism advances toward higher standards, some experiential offerings prioritize marketing over substance, and inflated prices and tactics that induce unnecessary spending remain all too common. Consumers pay for emotional fulfillment, yet often find that their expectations go unmet. When “healing” becomes a marketing catchphrase and “a sense of ease” comes with a price tag, repeated disappointments gradually erode consumers’ trust in experiential consumption.

The third concern combines “symbolization” with “algorithmic control”—experiences become markers of identity while consumer choices fall increasingly under the influence of algorithms. New forms of consumption may seem to offer fresh ways to experience life and relieve the pressures of a fast-paced lifestyle. Yet platform algorithms, centered on metrics such as click-through rates and time spent on a platform, can narrow consumers’ informational horizons and weaken the connection between consumer experiences and broader social value. Personalized consumption that seems to express individual autonomy may, in reality, amount to little more than conformity encouraged by algorithms within an information bubble.

More troubling still, if experiential consumption veers toward the extreme of “entertainment above all else,” it may temporarily numb people to real-world problems without offering genuine healing. Material improvements, after all, have their limits, whereas human development is boundless. The gap between the two provides fertile ground for experiential consumption to flourish—and leaves it particularly open to abuse and misuse. As experiential consumption gradually shifts from a lifestyle choice into a trend shaped by algorithmic recommendations and driven by social media spectacles, the underlying purpose of consumption deserves scrutiny—whether it nourishes the self or merely caters to predefined expectations.

Truly valuable experiences should lead to self-realization and spiritual enrichment, rather than reduce this authentic human pursuit to symbolic forms of consumption. Keeping human subjectivity at the center of consumption and reconnecting with the authentic self through experience can help this shift in lifestyle retain its direction amid the revelry.

Chen Siyu (associate research fellow) and Tian Mingxiao (research fellow) are from the Institute for Development Strategy and Public Policy at the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences.