The GameStop hype that we saw early this year has increased interest with young people today for investing. According to a recent survey from Wells Fargo at least one third of teens are now interested in learning financial lessons from social media and internet sources.
They surveyed individuals who were between 13 to 17 years old. They found that it was thanks to GameStop that many of them started getting interested in the first place in finance and investing.
The majority of students today are not going to get this sort of education or interest inspired while attending their regular school classes.
Where then are they going to pick up that financial education if they don't seek it out or have parents who are teaching them? The GameStop incident has made more teens today seriously consider their financial future via investing and that means some might have started possibly making better decisions for their future, and that's a good thing.
Previous surveys have found that a large majority of teens today lack critical financial literacy skills.
They might have been exposed to some talk about finance at school but as far as having good money management skills there are many teens who report feeling rather clueless about it all.
To some the GameStop phenomenon was not surprising, and it might not have been anything new, but it's clear it had an impact.
Thanks to easy access to investing with online platforms available today we are seeing more young people get into the market. Whether or not that is a good thing is going to be up to those individuals to determine at their own risk.
The content is for informational purposes only and is not financial or investment advice.
Sources:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-investment-generation-z/easy-money-gen-z-invest-online-to-beat-coronavirus-woes-idUSKBN2BB00K
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-pandemic-and-now-gamestop-have-turned-young-people-onto-investing-these-top-tiktok-accounts-offer-advice-for-budding-warren-buffetts-11612457418
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nearly-60-of-young-investors-are-collaborating-thanks-to-technology-often-turning-to-social-media-for-advice-301232694.html
Schools should teach useful skills and knowledge.
Nowadays what people learn for example in the middle school, they quickly forget the most of it after the exams, because they do not use (and do not even need) the most of that knowledge.
It's quite interesting and cryptocurrancy is similar to investing but on steroids.
Millennials are known not to want to wait for anything with a want it now approach. But can this extend to investment? Seems to be doing so.