Over Christmas, UK social media sales are projected to reach £2.4billion – a quarter of all 2025 festive spending – with Gen Z driving the social commerce surge, says the latest research from Unbox and Retail Economics.

Original research of 2,000 UK consumers by social commerce management platform, Unbox, and Retail Economics revealed that Gen Z plans to spend a third of their Christmas gifting budgets on social shopping platforms this year. Separate figures released today, Wed (03 Dec 2025), from TikTok Shop also pointed to growing demand on its platform, having broken its own Black Friday sales record earlier this week, selling 27 items per second.

“Social commerce is becoming a mainstream part of the retail landscape, particularly for younger shoppers as they head into Christmas,” said Richard Lim, Chief Executive of Retail Economics.

Gen Z’s channel of choice

The research findings come as social channels continue to experience significant growth, growing x5 faster than the wider ecommerce market and tipped to reach £20billion by 2030.

This trend is expected to continue next year, with over half (51%) of UK shoppers saying social will account for a larger proportion of online purchases in 2026, rising to two thirds (65%) of Gen Z.

As well as becoming Gen Z’s ‘channel of choice’ for purchases, social platforms are also increasingly overtaking traditional search. Over half (52%) of Gen Zers will use TikTok or Instagram over Google to research products, indicating the growing role social is now playing in both search and product discovery.

“Gen Z has rewritten how product discovery works,” Hugo Soul, CEO of Unbox said. “TikTok is now their primary search engine, and trust has migrated from brands to creators. It’s no surprise global brands are reorganising around social commerce, but doing so at enterprise scale requires new systems, new governance and new ways of working.”

Trust dynamics shift towards content creators

According to the poll, Gen Z shoppers are twice as likely to trust creators (43%) over brands (22%) when deciding what to buy on social platforms.

Seller trust is now an issue for 61% of social media shoppers across all age groups, with product authenticity and fear of fakes (38%) one of the primary concerns. This is creating a “trust gap” that could hinder performance for brands’ social commerce strategies if left unchecked, as Lim explained:

“Gen Z’s reliance on creators and social search is accelerating this shift, reshaping how brands need to show up and compete. The challenge for retailers is keeping pace with rapid behavioural change, while maintaining trust, accuracy and consistency across fast-moving platforms.”