People shop at a clothing store in Manhattan on Nov. 7, 2025, in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Black Friday is proving more popular for younger consumers than for their elders, according to a new report provided exclusively to CNBC.
AT&T Business‘ 2025 Holiday Shopping Survey, conducted by Morning Consult, found that 40% of Generation Z members and 32% of millennials plan to do most of their shopping on Black Friday. Older generations, on the other hand, prefer to shop later in the season, just a week or two before Christmas, the survey found.
“Black Friday is always such a big deal, and the pricing and the offers and advertising that’s done during that time is probably what would draw Gen Z, especially things done on social media,” said Angela Rutherford, AT&T’s vice president of mid-market sales.
The enthusiasm for Black Friday comes even as Gen Z plans to pull back their spending.
Consulting firm PwC reported in September that Gen Z shoppers plan to spend 23% less on average this holiday season than a year ago – the sharpest decline of any generation and a significant change from the previous year, when Gen Z said they planned to spend 37% more.
And as non-wealthy Americans face pressures of higher prices and economic uncertainty, some reports are showing signs of a “K-shaped” economy that may stretch into the holiday season, with wealthier consumers spending more and lower-income consumers shopping more conservatively.
A new Deloitte survey found that consumers at large plan to spend 4% less on Black Friday than they did last year, primarily due to concerns of financial constraints and a higher cost of living.
Still, Rutherford said consumers are being more “intentional and value-driven” in their holiday shopping this year.
That spending is translating into more support for small businesses rather than large legacy retailers, with 77% of consumers reporting they would do all of their holiday shopping at small businesses if they could and if the pricing was the same, according to AT&T’s survey.
Compared with last year, the number of survey respondents who said they shop at small businesses to boost their local economies grew by 8 percentage points.
“I think there’s a price consciousness out there, combined with a, ‘If I can still save money or get a good price, I will still shop local,’ type of mentality out there,” Rutherford said.
The AT&T survey also found that 72% of people reported getting their gift ideas from in-person shopping rather than from social media.
And even as artificial intelligence begins to reshape the way people shop, more than half of shoppers said they were more likely to use traditional online search methods for their gifting this holiday season than AI – just 9% of those surveyed said they are more likely to use AI to find gifts.
“AI has exploded over the last couple years, and it’s infiltrating all aspects of life,” Rutherford said. “I think as time goes on, you will see a shift from the traditional search to AI for shopping.”
