Making kids money smart in the age of social media

For a long time now, we've known that social media — the access it opens up for young people and the power it can wield over their impressionable minds — is a double-edged sword.

- RAVI BHUSHAN

While on the one hand, it can expose them to cultures, points of view, and realities most of them would not have been able to engage with in real time, on the other, it has a disproportionate impact on how they perceive and understand the world around them.

Netflix's most recent global hit series, Adolescence, owes its popularity to the fact that it tapped into the universal unspoken terror that all parents, everywhere, feel sometimes, the most dangerous place for a child to be is their own bedroom, behind their phone screen. How do you protect them from that?

While only a scant few among us will encounter situations as dire as the ones that make headlines, it behoves us all to actively take steps to limit the influence that social media has on our children's minds. One very often and easily overlooked aspect is how social media and self-styled influencers are shaping the way our children's attitudes and understanding of money. It can be devastatingly corrosive because of how subliminally it is done.

A 2022 report found over 60 per cent of US investors under the age of 35 use social media as a source of information to make investment decisions. But a 2024 finfluencer study found that nearly 74 per cent of videos from finfluencers contain poor or potentially dangerous advice, and 81 per cent of videos with money-related hashtags contained unregulated financial advice.