Obsession with New Year’s Reinvention
Trinity Larsen | Feb. 3, 2026
A display table featuring New Year’s reading in the Pew Learning Center and Ellison Library at Warren Wilson College (WWC), on Jan. 28, 2026 in Swannanoa, N.C. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
“New year, new you.” A fresh start. It can be tempting to think this way when society expects the beginning of the new year to mean starting over. But there's a bigger reason why there is pressure to make resolutions in the first place.
In recent years, the term “eras” has captivated social media trends. Videos with creators saying they are in their “clean girl era” or “fitness era” dominate on apps like Instagram and TikTok. A new “era” suggests that a person is dismantling an old habit and replacing it with a better one, like eating healthier foods and working out.
What better time to partake in a trend about bettering yourself than the beginning of a new year? When the calendar reads Jan. 1, why not start a new life?
For many, the new year promotes a motivational mindset when people design their resolutions. The vast majority of New Year's resolutions do not make it past January.
“About 80% of New Year's resolutions are forgotten by February, and only 9% of people stick to them all year long,” Maureen Salamon, Executive Editor of Harvard Women’s Health Watch and author of this Turning Resolutions Into Reinventions article, wrote.
If people are so bad at keeping their resolutions, why do they succumb to the pressure to create those goals in the first place?
Much like the social media creation of eras, self-improvement around the new year is leveraged as a marketing tool to keep consumers busy buying products promoted by influencers. These products claim to improve consumers’ lives when in actuality, they are often a waste of money that cannot deliver on their claims.
“New Year’s Eve is capitalism’s ritualized orgy of renewal," Dr. Dyland Clark, Co-Director of Peace & Conflict Studies at the University of Colorado, wrote. “It is a sacred day for the fashion industry, electronics makers and politicians: once again, everything is made outdated.”
Buying and spending culture, especially on New Year’s Eve, distracts consumers with trends pitched as new year celebrations. All while bigger problems carry on.
“Slavery, hunger, AIDS, war and fear ravage humanity…military spending is in vogue around the globe,” Clark said. “New Year’s Eve…disguises the fact that every year is the commodity.”
At this point, the excitement that comes with the new year is a tradition. Stopping to realize the harm of annual reinventions is a vital part of being a more mindful consumer around the holiday.
“Remembering, recycling, reusing, rediscovering and rebuilding: these designs run counter to the tyranny of the New,” Clark said.
A motto that Warren Wilson students typically go by, and one that consumers should too.