Scrolling to Financial Agency: How Gen Z Navigates Financial Advice on Social Media

Social media has become a major source of financial information for many young adults. Recent survey data suggest that as many as 79% of young adults turn to social media for information about investing, budgeting, credit, and other long-term financial decisions. Platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Reddit now play a significant role in how financial information is encountered and understood. 

This marks a broader shift in how financial knowledge is acquired. Research on financial socialization from the early 2000s found that parents were the primary source of financial guidance for young adults, while formal education, work experience, and professional advisors played secondary roles. Today, while family and friends still matter, more recent Gallup survey data shows a clear generational divide: older adults are more likely to rely on financial advisors or planners, while adult Gen Z (born 1997-2008) are more likely to turn to social media and digital platforms. These differences signal a transformation in how financial guidance has been traditionally sought, delivered, and trusted.

These patterns may also reflect differences in life stage, access, and financial experience. Higher-income and more highly educated individuals are more likely to access formal sources of guidance like financial planners, employer-sponsored seminars, and structured investment tools, while younger investors are more likely to turn to social media and other informal channels. Recent FINRA data further suggests that social media users and financial influencer followers tend to be younger, have lower portfolio values, and report higher rates of fraud exposure and financial loss. Taken together, these patterns suggest that digital financial guidance plays a particularly important role for younger investors who may have less experience, fewer financial cushions, and greater exposure to unreliable content online.

To better understand how young adults are making sense of this environment, New America’s Teaching, Learning, and Tech team convened a roundtable with 15 young adults ages 18 to 25, including low-income college students, recent graduates, and early-career workers. The participants were asked:

• What financial decisions feel most important at this stage of life?
• What makes financial advice on social media seem trustworthy or questionable?
• What are the pitfalls of using social media for financial advice?

Generally, participants described social media as accessible and immediate, but also as a space they had to navigate critically. Their experiences show how platform design, social comparison, and economic pressure are reshaping financial authority.

Key Findings

Financial content was often encountered passively rather than deliberately sought out

For most participants, social media was not a deliberate first stop for financial guidance. Financial content surfaced in YouTube ads, TikTok feeds, Instagram posts, and Reddit threads, often when participants were already worried about a specific issue such as opening a credit card, deciding how to use earned income for the first time, or understanding a market event. In many cases, they did not go looking for broad financial advice first. Platform feeds, recommendations, and ads introduced financial content in the course of scrolling or searching for something else. Their first exposure was often shaped as much by platform delivery as by deliberate search.

Financial urgency shapes how content is received

Participants described their financial lives as often stressful, high-stakes, and time-sensitive. They spoke about managing rent, debt, savings, credit, and investing under conditions of rising costs and uncertainty. Several described pressure to “catch up” financially or avoid falling behind peers. As one participant put it, social media was constantly “creating expectations among friends,” making spending, travel, and financial milestones more visible while obscuring the resources or support behind them.

Some of this pressure reflected the realities of early adulthood when many participants were still trying to establish financial stability and prioritize immediate needs over long-term investing. But it was especially pronounced among those facing economic precarity, such as unemployment, inconsistent income, or the loss of public benefits. For them, advice that assumed disposable income often felt unrealistic. Social media did not just offer financial advice. It also circulated visible markers of what being financially “on track” was supposed to look like, often making financial shortfall feel more personal.

Trust depended on relatability, competence, and relevance

Participants consistently said they trusted social media influencers who seemed relatable. Advice felt more credible when it came from someone who appeared to share their age, life stage, or financial starting point. Beyond likability, participants saw shared experience as a sign that a creator better understood the constraints they faced.

But relatability was not enough. Participants were wary of creators who projected confidence without demonstrating actual knowledge or experience. They were also skeptical of older creators who seemed out of touch with current realities such as gig work, digital investing platforms, or cryptocurrency. Trust depended on a mix of perceived similarity, demonstrated competence, and relevance to current economic conditions.

Participants actively evaluated credibility, but knew those strategies had limits

Participants drew strong distinctions between platforms. TikTok and Instagram Reels were seen as less trustworthy for financial advice, because short-form formats reward attention-grabbing hooks, oversimplification, and exaggerated certainty. As one participant put it, these platforms felt “more clickbaity [sic],” while another explained that “the premise of short form content is to grab your attention.” In participants’ view, these formats were better suited to capturing attention than explaining complex financial tradeoffs.

YouTube was described as the most trusted platform because longer videos allowed for more step-by-step explanation. Reddit served less as a primary source of advice than as a place to verify or challenge advice found elsewhere. Participants valued these longer-form spaces for the added context and range of perspectives they offered.

Social media lowered barriers, but also created new risks

Participants described real benefits from social media financial content, including help with opening savings accounts, understanding Roth IRAs, improving credit, and automating savings. In these cases, social media made financial topics feel more accessible.

But participants also described harm. Some had acted on trending investment narratives without fully understanding the risks. Others felt pressured into opening accounts or moving money too quickly because creators spoke with high confidence and urgency. Even without direct financial loss, participants described confusion, stress, and indecision caused by information overload or comparison-driven content. The same features that made financial content accessible (i.e. brevity, confidence, and relatability) also made it easy to overgeneralize or misapply.

Recommendations

These findings suggest that the issue is not simply a lack of knowledge or discernment among young adults. Participants often demonstrated caution and skepticism. The larger issue is that they are being asked to act as consumers, fact-checkers, and risk managers in digital environments that do not support careful decision-making. Three implications stand out:

• Financial literacy efforts should focus not only on content, but also on persuasive technique: Participants were often less concerned with blatant falsehoods than with subtler signals such as confidence, relatability, repetition, and emotional appeal. Literacy efforts should help young adults recognize how these cues shape trust, including when advice is oversimplified, selectively presented, or stripped of context.
• Interventions should account for platform format: Young adults do not encounter financial advice in a single media environment. Short-form platforms may require rapid credibility checks, such as spotting exaggerated certainty or missing risk disclosures. Longer-form platforms may call for deeper evaluation of evidence, expertise, and incentives. Treating all platforms as equivalent misses how format shapes trust and decision-making.
• Consumer protection for financial content on social media needs to be stronger: Participants described real harm from acting on advice that was incomplete, promotional, or poorly vetted. Existing rules, particularly the Federal Trade Commission’s Endorsement Guides, provide a baseline by requiring clear disclosure of material relationships in endorsements. But financial content presents distinct challenges that are not fully addressed by creator-level disclosure alone. Recent lawsuits over youth mental-health harms from social media have drawn attention to how platform design can amplify harmful content, not just how individual users behave. A similar logic may apply in financial contexts, where recommendation systems and engagement-based ranking increases vulnerability to misinformation. Rather than relying only on case-by-case oversight of individual creators, platforms could be required to label sponsored financial content, disclose conflicts of interest, and include clear risk warnings on promotional investment posts.

Conclusion

The roundtable suggests that Gen Z approaches financial advice on social media with more skepticism and active evaluation than broader institutional discussions often assume. Social media has expanded access to financial conversations and lowered barriers to entry, but it has also shifted the burden of interpretation onto young adults navigating consequential decisions in environments that often reward content for being attention-grabbing, confident, and shareable over accuracy.

That burden falls unevenly. Young adults facing economic precarity, unstable employment, or limited family wealth may be especially vulnerable to risky financial content and less able to absorb the consequences of bad advice. Addressing this problem will require stronger consumer protections, clearer platform disclosures, and greater investment in digital literacy as a foundation for sound financial judgment. Before young adults can make sound financial decisions, they must first be equipped to assess credibility, recognize persuasion, and interpret the systems through which financial information is delivered.