Hahahahaha
(Caveat: IDK if the polling company is reliable.)
Social media and insta people are to blame. And these folks aren’t even rich, they rent everything.
I remember when all these outlets were endlessly claiming that Millennials believed a whole bunch of stupid shit that we didn’t.
It never ends, does it?
So, how are your finger-embedded diamonds?
Life hasn’t completely crush their ambitions yet. Their second economic collapse and my 4th should snuff out the light.
To be fair, they’ll probably need that to buy a house
Remember, you are required to spend your whole life pursuing extreme wealth and spend enormous amounts of money on the economy. This is what’s ‘best’ for the economy. No one cares about your happiness. When you are 50, you will realize that you hate all of this, money is not that important, you just made other people rich and you are lonely. You wasted your life going after a fallacy. And you never became an oligarch.
From what I could track down, here is all the available data on the polling methodology:
The Empower “Secret to Success” study is based on online survey responses from 2,203 Americans ages 18+ fielded by Morning Consult from September 13-14, 2024. The survey is weighted to be nationally representative of U.S. adults (aged 18+).
It also comes not from a polling company, but from a company that provides financial news, and financial services. No potential conflict of interest there…
Basically, the data is near-worthless.
Gen Z’s financial ambitions, and the dissonance between their dreams and reality, honestly highlight a troubling cultural shift that I’m sure, if we’re honest, we all recognize. This poll, while maybe not bulletproof in methodology, lines up with other findings from Credit Karma, other Morning Consult surveys, and academic sources like PLOS and Collabra: Psychology. The term “money dysphoria,” used by financial therapists, gets to the heart of the issue, which is a mismatch between the paychecks, fame, and wealth many envision and the actual economic terrain we’re navigating. The fact that more than half of Gen Z reportedly wants to be influencers points to a broader trend where social media distorts not only career goals but also broader ideas about value and success.
Researchers see Gen Z as unique—sometimes in ways worth celebrating, but more often in ways that are troubling. Every generation wrestles with the pressures of its time, but Gen Z is the only generation that spent critical childhood-development years under a spotlight powered by social algorithms, constantly fed by curated images and endless comparisons. It seems obvious this environment is going to shape approaches to work, wealth, and purpose, often in ways that are kind of adrift from reality. What stands out here isn’t just misplaced optimism; it’s the fallout of growing up in an ecosystem designed to blur the lines between aspiration and delusion.
This isn’t to pin dysfunction entirely on Z; after all, no one chooses the world they inherit. But the extent to which our formative years were shaped by this digital distortion makes the challenges uniquely sharp. Gen Z was effectively raised in a hall of mirrors. That’s going to have an effect. And honestly, when I’m talking with from Gen Z about it, we tend to either completely agree and are pretty worried about it, or some people absolutely deny it and get pretty angry about it.
I think if you’re honest with yourself and are in college, you can kind of look around your classrooms and see who is going to feel which way.
Wait, half of Gen Z says they want to be an influencer? Where are you getting this info?
Basically, the data is near-worthless.
no… it’s worth shitloads. Just not to the people reading it. It’s worth it to the people that pay Fortune to run adds like these to get rubes trying to day trade on the markets or some other shit like that.
They’ve been doing polls since at least the 2016 presidential election. I just don’t know if they are any good.
It looks like with some of their other stuff, they do provide more methodology, but given that the only methodology provided here is the fact that it was an online survey, and the sample size was 2203 (of very roughly 300,000,000) it doesn’t give us much meaninful to go off of. Notably, they also exclude anyone under 18 in the polls (or attempt to, given that this is online with no indication of how their sample was selected) which is a significant portion of those the sample is meant to represent. Given that thats all we really know, we can’t really get a meaninful idea of what the original data was, or how accurate the drawn conclusions are.
They are all going to influence each other on Youtube.
Just a single dollar bill, and everyone gets it for one day and can only spend it on another influencer. Reminds me of those dudes in college that are convinced it is ok that they are failing, because eventually people are going to pay millions to watch a stream of them playing video games in their filthy rooms. 🤣
Exactly what we need, another generation of temporary embarrassed millionaires
Good luck with that, idiots. Enjoy an entire wasted life of being a temporarily embarrassed billionaire.
Why does it make someone an idiot if they wish to be a millionaire?
Have to wonder if this is an issue of demographic cohort, or just age. Millennials are old enough to have an idea of how much they actually need.
Zoomers might be overestimating things
Or maybe Z knows something about inflation that everyone else doesn’t lol
That might be minimum wage in two decades who knows
That might be minimum wage in two decades who knows
Living wage? Maybe-to-probably. Minimum wage? Doubtful.