V.Ideas tagged #moneytok got 10.6 billion views on TickTock – more than #tacotuesday, #gossip and #cookingtiktok. Creators can use tags to signal that their posts are part of a stream of short-video platforms that provide financial advice. In posts lasting less than a minute, Mandy Woodruff-Santos posted career and investment tips to his 27,500 followers. Mrs Woodruff-Santos, who was born in Atlanta, Georgia, said her working parents did not discuss investing at the dinner table and because of her education she had little knowledge of how to manage or extend credit cards. . Now he and other influential people help their followers with financial problems.
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Reddit, a frequent online forum by many retail punters, did not gain the notoriety it acquired during the spectacular rise of GameStop stock last year. But TikTok, which has 1bn users worldwide, is introducing many young Americans to the world of savings and investing. About a quarter of 18- to 40-year-old investors and 41% of 18- to 24-year-olds seek financial advice on the platform, according to a survey conducted by a website called Magnify Money.
Videos can rely primarily on text (“How to Credit Card Beat” or “Adulting 101”), or featuring cute kids or dancing. Some manufacturers use their experience to explain financial concepts. Mark Tilbury, the head of a retail company, has garnered 7 million followers with his explanation of the Fortune 500 company’s strategy. Other manufacturers draw on personal experience. Tori Dunlap—, who founded Her First 100k, which offers money tips and payment courses for women, said she grew up in a family that often talked about finances. “I became friends with money,” said Miss Dunlap, now a well-meaning sailor for about 2 million followers. Still others are talking about the possibility of making money from stocks, such as videos of California day-traders posing with their sports cars after hitting the market.
More broadly, like social media, the problem is that posts can be misleading or misleading TikTok has some rules for content monitoring: users can flag posts, and creators must label branded content from which they stand for profit. Those who click on #moneytok have been warned that investing carries risk. But some videos are as short as 15 seconds, giving very little time for a brief discussion of those risks. According to a survey by Paxfull, a cryptocurrency-trading platform, only 10% of the top influencers mentioned financial eligibility in their TikTok biographies or on their personal websites. Day-traders posted on TikTok hint at big profits, but some people may admit nursing losses, as they have been doing since the recent market turmoil. The popularity of #moneytok certainly speaks to the enthusiasm of users for money and investment. The hope is that social media nurtures that interest instead of destroying it.
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This article was published in the Finance and Economics section of the print edition under the title “MoneyToks”.