If you’ve grown up in the digital age, you likely have some understanding of how unreliable information spreads across the net. Millennials far and wide have been inundated with enough YouTube troll comments, Nigerian prince emails and “free iPhone” pop-ups to build a healthy skepticism of internet browsing. Now, it seems that this learning curve has become a perennial part of growing up, as Gen Z and Gen Alpha are surmising that social media apps like TikTok are rife with terrible financial advice. New studies from researchers at Intuit Credit Karma estimate that over 77 percent of Gen Z kids are looking to influencers on the short-form video app for money management, while roughly 61 percent of millennials are doing the same on YouTube and Facebook.
In order to understand just how damaging these financial words of wisdom can be to a growing audience of youngsters, lets take a moment to briefly run through the data, and see exactly where young people are being led astray. After all, bad financial advice is a uniquely serious problem, which can impact your life for decades to come in certain circumstances. Some youths have encountered advice on TikTok that has resulted in fines, IRS debt and even jail time. With no further preamble let’s enter the TikTok rabbit hole, and see what we can learn about the growing threat of misinformation in the financial sector.
Exploring The FinTok Hashtag
Avid TikTok users are surely aware of the trend that sees certain niches merged with the title of the app. This means that you can find thousands of videos offering financial advice by searching the tag “FinTok.” The top videos within the niche have garnered millions of views, amassed hundreds of thousands of combined followers and brought in untold sums of cash to their original uploaders. These videos often provide advice about maximizing credit card rewards, airline miles or building a savings profile through outlets such as a Roth IRA or a CD fund. Unfortunately, many of these videos are misleading, patently false or at worst, outright scams.
Influencers within the FinTok niche build their brand on the backs of their followers and often have no formal background in the world of actual finance. This means that the site is plagued with both well-intentioned ignorance and overt bad actors seeking to enrich themselves by taking advantage of their followers. According to the aforementioned Credit Karma study, nearly a quarter of all millennial and Gen Z TikTok users have admitted to being scammed online, and many have said that they’ll never trust social media for financial advice ever again. This is of course disheartening, especially because there is legitimate advice to be found on these platforms. Like many other corners of the internet, FinTok does require some know-how and independent research in order to know who you can trust.
The Very Worst Of FinTok
For those that have taken the advice of bad actors on FinTok, the repercussions can be quite costly. You may recall a trend from the site that made national headlines back in Fall 2024, which TikTok users dubbed the “infinite money glitch.” The seemingly foolproof exploit called for TikTokers to write themselves checks for massive sums of money which they did not actually possess. Then, users would deposit these checks at a JPMorgan Chase bank, where the phantom funds would instantly appear in their account balance. Users would then withdraw these massive sums from an ATM, and seemingly generate thousands out of thin air. While the infinite money glitch may sound like a dream come true for a young person with no financial background, adults may recognize this as a much more common term: Check fraud. Somehow, a nefarious grouping of FinTok influencers convinced droves of young people to commit criminal check fraud by rebranding it as a newfangled trend.
As you can imagine, JPMorgan Chase quickly caught wind of this trend, and sharply dropped the hammer on all those who attempted the exploit. Some of these misguided TikTokers saw harsh fines imposed on them by local police, while others were fully prosecuted for fraud and thrown in jail. Needless to say, these users not only failed to turn a profit, but actively hindered their financial future for decades to come by developing a rap sheet with the police, a black mark from the IRS and a lifetime ban from all JPMorgan Chase establishments. The banking conglomerate has also since changed their deposit-posting system, so even those who used the ATM as intended have effectively been punished. While this scam represents the worst that FinTok has to offer, it’s just one of many shaky pieces of advice that young people have learned the hard way not to follow.
FinTok As A Pyramid Scheme
Another harsh lesson that young people have reckoned with online is the growing trend of TikTok influencers selling courses, investment opportunities and rug pull crypto scams. Many influencers have been able to leverage their goodwill to push shady financial advice on their followers through a number of off-platform means. These methods are often extremely difficult or impossible to have refunded, and provide little to no recourse for those who fall victim. These poor investments aren’t relegated to obscure or niche content creators either. Influencers as ubiquitous as Haliey Welch (AKA ‘Hawk Tuah’ Girl) and sitting president Donald Trump have recently released meme coins that lost millions of dollars for their most loyal followers.
Like the snake oil salesmen of yesteryear, FinTok scammers have built empires off of selling dreams to the most optimistic or desperate members of their community. This means preying on Gen Z users who don’t know any better, millennials struggling with financial uncertainty or older social media scrollers that haven’t grown up with digital literacy embedded into their browsing habits. Of course, this isn’t to say that all crypto investments, certifications and other online subscriptions are an outright scam. Some are on the up-and-up and can be very useful to certain users. That’s part of what makes nefarious FinTok scammers so effective, as they prey on those hoping to see the good faith that some have found in their online investments.
The Best Of Online Financial Advice
Since the early days of the internet, millions of users have found themselves at the intersection of extremely sagacious and extremely lucky. Tales of Reddit users in the r/WallStreetBets community making millions on the backs of GameStop stocks and others who rocketed to the top of the Robinhood charts with DOGE investments have permeated pop culture like few others. Still, if you follow the pattern of who makes the most money on these investments, you’ll see that these users either got in extremely early, before major influencers had flooded the market or they used a level of discernment relegated to those with top-shelf financial literacy skills. This doesn’t mean that these massive investments are out of reach for the average TikToker, but it does mean you’ll need to employ a lot more legwork than blindly following a man with a trusting smile and a penchant for adding dollar sign animations on CapCut.
Like all financial investments, it’s wise to stop and do your own research before buying in to the trends on TikTok. If something sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is. If you do find yourself in possession of a great piece of investment advice, be sure to run it by a trusted source in your real life, whether that means an accountant, a spouse or a parent. Conversely, if you have young children, be sure to provide them with as much financial literacy education as you can before they reach a solo investing age. Most of all, remember that apps such as TikTok require almost no barrier for entry, so the things you’re seeing as you doomscroll are not held to any journalistic standard of truth. While it’s unfortunate that so many young people are being taken advantage of by bad actors on TikTok, it is seemingly a rite of passage for those who grow up in a digital landscape.
