Is Vinted addiction really a thing? After the social media ban, the UK wants to ban Vinted and eBay for under-16s too

In Europe, the obsession with Vinted is taking a strange turn. The second-hand clothing and goods resale platform has achieved impressive success in recent years: in 2024, the app recorded a 330% increase in net profits, with a turnover of €76.7 million, while in 2025 the company posted €1.1 billion in revenue. The app's mechanism is simple: you can list your items, receive offers, and once a sale is completed, download a shipping label directly from the app. Thanks to the popularity of vintage and second-hand fashion, a huge number of young people have made serious money on Vinted.  

The thing is, buying and selling on Vinted is so easy that even a child could do it — which is precisely why the United Kingdom is considering banning the platform for under-16s, along with competitor eBay. The decision, as reported by the BBC, would form part of a broader digital safety plan aimed at younger users. In March 2027, the UK will introduce a ban on social media use for under-16s, who will be blocked from using Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat. Meanwhile, Europe is moving ever closer to a social media ban for under-14s, while Italy has seen the opening of its first centre for digital addiction. 

The same mechanism as slot machines  

Can buying-and-selling platforms like Vinted and eBay really be compared to social media? According to some studies, yes: one of the reasons apps like TikTok and Instagram are considered dangerous is the similarity of their feeds (the For You page) to slot machines. With a swipe upward, you can "scroll" and refresh the page, as if it were a game. The outcome — new content to consume — is unpredictable, which is why it releases dopamine, the neurotransmitter of reward and anticipation, because the brain doesn't know whether the next post it sees will be boring or entertaining.

Doomscrolling — spending long stretches of time online continuously scrolling through social media and news feeds — is now a widely recognised practice for its negative impact on young people's minds (its effects on adults are still largely overlooked) at a cognitive level.

The same reward-and-anticipation mechanism can be found on Vinted and eBay as well: both have an endless "For You page," driven by an algorithm that, based on user preferences, highlights products they might be interested in.

Should we only be worried about young people?  

Lisa Nandi, the UK's Culture Secretary, told the BBC Sunday programme that the ban would also protect minors from the risk of online grooming, given that both Vinted and eBay, like the most popular social platforms, have a dedicated private messaging section.

The ban, according to the Sunday Times, could therefore also extend to other second-hand resale sites, such as Depop and Facebook Marketplace. eBay (which also owns Depop) has said it is committed to "continuing to engage constructively with the government," while Vinted has stated it welcomes an "open dialogue" with ministers and regulatory authorities. Both Vinted and eBay are intended for adult users, but no effective age verification controls exist for registered members (Vinted's terms and conditions state that parents or legal guardians may create an account for their children, provided they are supervised by an adult).  

The UK ban on social media — and possibly on online resale platforms too — follows in the footsteps of the measure introduced in Australia in 2025. While measures of this kind can help protect minors and raise public awareness of the risks associated with the misuse of social media, they leave one question unanswered: why intervene only on access for younger users, without rethinking how the platforms themselves work?

The mechanisms through which social platforms encourage compulsive use — such as algorithms designed along the same lines as gambling — are by now well known to the public. Under-16s may be better protected from doomscrolling, but what will happen to everyone else? The solution, perhaps, must come from governments, and not from yet another digital detox trend.