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“Looking to our future, we kind of have to take (finances) into our own hands if we want to be able to afford a home one day, or to be able to raise a family,� said Robertson, a fourth-year student at Carleton University.

Across the country, generation Z is taking an increased interest in ways to leverage their earnings as the cost of living continues to soar. A 2024 survey by TD Bank shows 68 per cent of gen-Z Canadians are investing consistently on a yearly basis, the highest across any age demographic.

Content creators have taken note of the trend and are trying to fill knowledge gaps on social media. Financial influencers, also known as “finfluencers,� are gaining popularity with easy-to-understand videos about budgeting, investing and cryptocurrency.

Studies show young Canadians are taking notice. A 2024 report by the Canadian Securities Administrators found that about 82 per cent of 18-to-24-year-old Canadians use investment advice they’ve found on social media.

Alyssa Davies, founder of the platform Mixed Up Money, has amassed more than 85,000 followers on TikTok, where she aims to help people develop a more positive relationship with money.

When the 36-year-old from Calgary started her platform more than a decade ago, she said financial discourse was governed by “a lot of white men talking about how we should pull up our bootstraps and just manage our money better,� causing her to experience financial burnout while managing student loans and consumer debt.

She said she’s seen the financial landscape shift in the last decade as social media offers a more accessible way for users to talk about money and seek financial advice from people they relate to.

“We want to take advice from people who get it – people who we can relate to, people who look like us (and) sound like us. Not just experts walking around in suits and making things feel very formal and clinical,� she said.

For those who have grown up viewing money as a taboo topic, developing a positive human connection in a quest to better understand their finances is important — even if it’s one-sided and through a screen, said Errol Osecki, an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management. 

However, he said some young people are increasingly developing “parasocial relationships� with influencers offering financial advice.

“You don’t actually know them, and they don’t actually know you, but you start to develop these feelings,� said Osecki, who is in the early stages of researching the mental-health effects of financial influencer content. 

The onslaught of financial advice on social media can also be overwhelming. While Robertson said he prefers to learn about finances by listening to podcasts, he still comes across financial advice on social media – which he said he doesn't often take at face value.

“For young people who are seeking advice from creators like this, it’s important that we do our own research and make sure we’re not blindly trusting anyone on the internet," he said.

Michael O’Brien, a financial adviser at SunLife Financial based in St. John’s N.L., said he hears from many young Canadians who are “a little bit lost� and don’t know how to start managing their money amid a deluge of advice online.

“You can take your lunch and get 15 different pieces of information about what you should do with your money,� he said. “I think they’re just overloaded with information.�

O’Brien said he’s seeing more gen Zs walk into his office who “want to try to manage a portion of what they’re doing on their own,� rather than leaving it all to an adviser.

He hopes education systems across the country evolve to provide high school students with the baseline tools they need to manage their money and to discern fact from fiction when scrolling through financial advice on social media.

“I hear this all the time from clients who say, ‘I wish I had learned this in school,’� he said.

Saskatchewan and Quebec are the only two provinces in Canada with a mandatory financial literacy credit in high schools, with Ontario set to implement a requirement as part of the Grade 10 math curriculum as early as September 2026.

Robertson, who grew up in Ottawa, said the financial education he received in high school was "lacking when it comes to the practical financial tools that are helpful in real life." 

While he said he was lucky to have personal finance conversations around the dinner table in his teens, he said a lack of practical education "exacerbates the inequality" between young people who come from families who talk about money, and those who don't.

Financial education doesn't have to be overwhelming or abstract, O'Brien said, but rather provide base knowledge on topics such as budgeting and investing.

"The basic bird's eye view and just opening people's eyes to it is super important," he said.

This report by °µÍø½ûÇø was first published Aug. 26, 2025.