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Gen Z loves #RichTok \u2014 and they love being rich. Mash them together and you get a generation that overwhelmingly turns to social media for investing advice as they seek the most elusive thing of all for the young: financial independence.<\/p>\n
Social media ranked the top reason 55% of Gen Z and 44% of millennial investors say they got into investing, according to a survey of 300,000 investors over five years by the Oliver Wyman Forum.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In their search for alternative pathways toward financial security, personal finance influencers are providing solutions. Videos describing how to invest $1,000 in the stock market or explaining \u201cthe stock market tea\u201d in terms of the Kardashians or The Real Housewives franchise get hundreds of thousands of views across platforms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vivian Tu, better known as Your Rich BFF, has 2.7 million TikTok and 3.8 million Instagram followers and gives advice on investing, financial planning,and tax loopholes.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuddenly, you have someone who doesn\u2019t look like your dad\u2019s financial advisor. You have somebody who looks like I could be anybody\u2019s college best friend,\u201d Tu previously told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cI want to entertain my audience and turn finance into funance and just make talking about money more accessible for the next generation of rich BFFs.\u201d<\/p>\n Creator Rebecca Ma, who goes by Becca Bloom online, has 8.2 million followers on Instagram and TikTok. She shares her daily routine, feeding her cat caviar for breakfast and showcasing her endless luxury clothing hauls. Each one gets millions of views and likes.\u00a0<\/p>\n The popularity of these videos shows a common desire for extreme financial success. The Oliver Wyman Forum survey found in 2022, 18% of people said they felt pressure to make money to feel successful. By 2025, that number had climbed to 33%, and this feeling more than doubled among low-income earners and boomers nearing retirement.\u00a0<\/p>\n Economic uncertainty is driving Gen Z to invest early\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n More than half of Gen Z started to learn about investing before entering the workforce, compared to only 20% of Baby Boomers, according to a World Economic Forum survey from 2024. Nearly a third started investing in college or early adulthood, twice the rate of millennials who invested at that age.\u00a0<\/p>\n Early investing is part of a strategy towards financial independence, which is now the<\/p>\n fastest-growing unmet financial need, according to the survey. Economic nihilism is growing within Gen Z as they face a stagnant job market and are pessimistic about the future of safety net programs like Social Security.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s this genuine interest to learn. Isaid Natalya Guseva, head of financial markets and resilience initiatives at WEF, which has surveyed investor habits every two years since 2022. She sees Gen Z\u2019s lust for financial literacy as \u201cdriven by various things,\u201d but overwhelmingly a sense from them that they can\u2019t rely on things like governments and pensions as much as prior generations did. She also points to more access to information and diversified products to invest in as a draw for Gen Z.<\/p>\n Across all age groups, financial independence is the top skill people wished that they had learned more about earlier, according to WEF. Gen Z has taken this very seriously and is set on making as much money as possible.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGen Z and young people in general have many financial goals, and we see many of them are actually quite medium to long term,\u201d Guseva said. \u201cOnly about a tenth or fewer of our investors say they want to beat the market or speculate.\u201d<\/p>\n Young people prefer AI over traditional advising<\/strong><\/p>\n Nearly half of people consult AI when investing, compared to just over a third in 2023, according to the Oliver Wyman survey. Investors using AI typically use it as a sounding board rather than letting it independently invest their money. Compared to traditional financial advising, AI provides a judgment-free environment to learn, respondents said, and makes them feel more understood than human advisors.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe also see that younger generations, especially Gen Z, say that they would trust an institution more if it had an AI chat bot. \u201d Guseva said. \u201cMany are using AI to learn about investing\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n With increased pressure, Gen Z is making riskier investments. While Oliver Wyman Forum found that Gen X and Baby Boomers\u2019 investment portfolios tend to have more traditional compositions with higher levels of diversification and risk-hedging, cryptocurrency makes up more than one third of 71% of Gen Z investors\u2019 portfolios, according to WEF.<\/p>\n \u201cWe see that more people know how to access crypto than stock, CTFs, and bonds, and more people feel like they can understand crypto than stocks, CTFs and bonds,\u201d Guseva said. \u201cWhat that shows to us is that what crypto has done is had a really great marketing campaign and awareness campaign. To us, it\u2019s a lesson on, how do you meet people where they are?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Gen Z\u2019s pivot toward higher-risk, high-reward assets like cryptocurrency isn\u2019t just a trend. Their financial habits rank second among the areas where they feel most misjudged, the survey found, and their rejection of slow and steady wealth accumulation is a sign that they\u2019re done with conventional wisdom that doesn\u2019t fit their vision of the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n