She’s considered an influencer who uses TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to make financial education fun for young audiences.
Kyla Scanlon, 25, is a former options trader and the founder of Bread, a company that produces videos and skits that go viral.
“I’ll pretend to be [Federal Reserve Chair] Jerome Powell [or] pretend to be different stocks,” Scanlon told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “That really gets people involved because they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s funny. I can look at that and laugh’ … That really humanizes finance and brings people in in a way they wouldn’t normally expect.”
Her content focuses on helping young people understand how various economic topics affect them.
“When we talk about the Federal Reserve, it’s oftentimes very abstract. Like, they’re raising interest rates, but what does that really mean?” Scanlon said. “People want to know how things impact them directly.”
One of her viral videos is on the prevalence of “doomerism.” She defines it as a pessimistic view of life and the economy focusing on everything that’s going wrong.
“It’s a really enticing philosophy for people to subscribe to because it sort of removes agency from your life,” said Scanlon, who wants to give her audience a greater understanding of the hot-button Wall Street issues including the jobs market, inflation and recent bank failures.
As of late this week, Scanlon has almost 166,000 followers on TikTok, more than 156,000 on Twitter and 28,000 YouTube subscribers.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct Kyla Scanlon’s age.
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