How Young People Spend their Cash

The young are in debt, woke and complicated. They are simply unaware of where to spend their money.

Elders have always been confused by young people. Today’s youth are no different; in fact, they are perplexing. They have limited funds and costly preferences. They desire sincerity despite being engaged in a fake digital environment. Brands are attempting to grasp what these walking illusions desire and how they purchase as they begin to spend in earnest.

The economy is a good place to start when trying to figure out what makes young consumers tick. At one end of the scale, people in their 30s today came of age during the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 and the recession that followed. Their younger peers had a little more luck because they started their careers during times when the job market was tight and wages went up. Until the COVID-19 pandemic flipped their lives upside down. The youngers are unaware of where to spend and how to spend.

The attention economy has a lot to do with how young people live and shop. Buying things online is much faster and easier than going to the store. With the rise of social media, there are a lot of new ways to get people’s attention. Young people who shop have never known a time before smartphones. More than two-thirds of youth ages between 18 to 34 use their devices for four hours or more every day. Instagram, which is part of Meta’s empire, and TikTok, a video-sharing app owned by the Chinese, are where young people look for ideas, especially when it comes to fashion, beauty, and sportswear, where looks matter. User-made videos on TikTok can help even small brands quickly go viral.

Through these apps’ youngers are earning money and spending it over online shopping without learning anything new! Cowen, an investment bank, says that young people only spend more on phone bills, food, and travel than on Amazon Prime, which is a home delivery and entertainment service. 

People don’t completely avoid physical shops, as long as the experience feels personal and, ideally, combines the online and offline worlds.