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Valentine’s Day 2025: The Shift from Splurging to Spendthrift

<span id="hs_cos_wrapper_name" class="hs_cos_wrapper hs_cos_wrapper_meta_field hs_cos_wrapper_type_text" style="" data-hs-cos-general-type="meta_field" data-hs-cos-type="text" >Valentine’s Day 2025: The Shift from Splurging to Spendthrift</span>

Data Reveals a Valentine’s Day Shift from Splurging to Spendthrift 

While brands may only highlight “love” in their marketing every February, conversations about it thrive online year-round. Across blogs, forums, social media, news articles, polls, and imagery, love remains a constant theme. The challenge lies in aggregating and analyzing these conversations—which we've done below to help your brand get a leg up. 

Online interactions tell the story of consumers’ celebrations of love, and the products or services they give and receive to show it. Using Quid, we’ve extracted emerging trends and other powerful insights from this wealth of data to support your brand’s commerce and merchandising efforts as Valentines Day rolls around. 

 

The Shift from Romantic Trips to Self-care 

Generally, consumers are price-conscious, particularly when participating in commercialized holidays, but those planning for Valentine’s Day in 2023 seemed ready to splurge. The buzz around romantic getaways and luxurious personalized experiences were notable topics in our analysis: 

2023 Valentines Day consumer insight trendsTop trends from October 22, 2022 to February 28, 2023 

 

In the image above, Quid’s AI Summary quickly captures the focus of the posts in each trending discussion topic our AI identified, from “romantic travel” to “diverse love” and “social media trends.” Note the level of detail here, as this will come up again later in this discovery. 

In 2023, unforgettable and extravagant gifts took center stage, complemented by thoughtful, personalized experiences. These Valentines Day trends blended personal, cultural, and commercial influences as factors when choosing gifts, amplified by extensive digital promotions from brands. 

2023 Valentines Day consumer insight conversation top topicshttps://www.instagram.com/p/CnmYhUYLMeA/ 

 

 In 2024, the mood shifted, with romantic travel and personalized experiences dropping to number six on our list. We see “social media-inspired gift trends” taking over the top spot, and a new conversation joining the top three—“health, education, and participation.”  

 2024 Valentines Day consumer insight trendsTop trends from October 22, 2023 to February 28, 2024 

 

Our analysis also revealed a surprising new focus on personal wellness during the holiday. "Social media trends” included conversations about personal growth and self-care alongside romance, and an increase in mentions of “diverse expressions of love” reflected discussions among singles and their efforts to refocus their Valentines Day celebrations from romantic love to platonic, familial, and self. 

In 2024, the overall focus of Valentines Day turned inward, and we see this reflected in viral social interactions and posts : 

Valentines day tweet about self love 

https://x.com/cinnam0n_boi/status/1747542047337144800  

A deeper analysis into Valentines Day trends year-over-year helps us paint a more vibrant picture of the more recent trends and helps draw conclusions about the "how" and the "why" driving these trends.

 

2025: The Year of DIY & Creativity 

So far in 2025, consumers continue to pivot even further from the trends of 2023 that focused on giving partners extravagant travel and personalized experiences as expressions of love. The overall Valentines Day theme in 2025 seems to be transitioning from 2024’s focus on emotional well-being, to a thriftier approach to the holiday, with “creative gift ideas” as an emerging topic, driven by consumers adjusting to economic changes and financial challenges. To put it simply; consumers don’t really have money to spare, and are looking for handmade, cost-effective gifts to give this season. 

 2025 Valentines Day consumer insight trendsTop trends from October 22, 2023 to January 22, 2024 

In the image above, you can see that this year’s Valentine’s Day trends reflect a shift from extravagant romantic getaways to budget-friendly, DIY celebrations, as highlighted in our AI summary of the top three themes. Personalization is evolving, with a greater focus on cultural and community-driven experiences rather than commercial gifts, like sharing homemade recipes to create meaningful moments of love. 

We can dig into the specific consumer conversations that power these trends using Quid’s Audience tool. 

 

Digging Into Audience Details 

It’s easy to assume that those who splurged on lavish getaways were happy with the gifts they gave and received—and the data supports this, with an impressive 87% Net Sentiment (on a scale from -100 to 100) when reviewing the data from 2023: 

2023 Valentines Day consumer sentiment analysisMentions, Posts and Net Sentiment from Discussions About Valentine’s Day in 2023 

However, budget-conscious consumers in recent years remain just as engaged with the holiday and just as reachable for marketers. They still love to give and receive gifts, but with a greater emphasis on thoughtful, personalized gestures rather than spending extravagantly for the sake of it. Sentiment isn’t solely driven by cost, and we’ll explore the key metrics that truly matter next. 

Interestingly, this shift in focus has actually garnered a higher positive net sentiment rating, currently at 96% and rising: 

2025 Valentines Day consumer sentiment analysisMentions, Posts and Net Sentiment from Discussions About Valentine’s Day in 2025 

As we analyze consumer segments, we find that this year’s audience isn’t just expressing stronger sentiment toward the holiday— conversations around Valentines Day are also skewing both younger and older than they have in past years. The under-18 and over-45 age groups are over-indexing online, meaning they’re generating more content about the holiday than their peers typically do. This shift toward more thoughtful, personalized expressions of love has resonated with a wider range of age groups, drawing increased engagement from both younger and older consumers. Whether it’s because the trend feels more relatable, aligns better with their budget, or simply reflects how they prefer to express love, the holiday’s evolving focus is capturing new attention across generations. 

 2025 Valentines Day online activity consumer age analysis

 

 In Quid, we can evaluate demographics in several ways: 

 2025 Valentines Day consumer demographic analysis within Quid

As we dive deeper into the demographics leading these conversations, this year we see that although there are more posts by men about Valentine’s Day compared to women, the men involved in the discussion only represent a small portion of their online peers, with many posting about unrelated topics even as the holiday draws closer 

Women, on the other hand, are over-indexing compared to their usual online behavior, which means they are much more engaged with this topic compared to men, despite having a lower percentage of total posts. Demographic insights are crucial for brands developing holiday marketing strategies, and having access to deeper analyses ensures that every marketing dollar spent leads to maximum impact. 

2025 Valentines Day consumer gender demographic

Understanding this audiences’ interests is also helpful, particularly as we know we want to capture the hearts of our DIY-loving consumers this season. Each “over-indexed” bubble in our Quid analysis offers a world of clickable intel to explore, and can reveal ideas about how companies can tie their Valentine’s Day promotions to other topics that resonate with this audience. 

In the example below, users with “Arts and Crafts” as well as “Anime and Comics” as their interests made up a significant percentage of users discussing Valentine’s Day online, so DIY or comic book themed campaigns may end up resonating better with this audience than those that center around sports, politics, or extravagance. 

Interest analysis of people posting about Valentines Day in 2025 

 All of this analysis happens rapidly, and is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to uncovering insights that drive your desired business outcomes. Reach out for a demo today. We can’t wait to show you how it’s done!