She is considered an influencer who uses TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to make financial education fun for young audiences.
Kyla Scanlon, 26, is a former options trader and founder of Bread, a company whose videos and skits have gone viral.
“I would pretend to be (Fed Chairman) Jerome Powell (or) pretend to be a different stock,” Scanlon told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “It really gets people involved because they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s funny. I can look at that and laugh’…it really humanizes finance and in ways that they wouldn’t normally think of attract people.”
Her content focuses on helping young people understand how various economic topics affect them.
“When we talk about the Fed, it’s usually very abstract. Like, they’re raising interest rates, but what does that really mean?” Scanlon said. “People want to know how things directly affect them.”
One of her viral videos was about the prevalence of “Doomsdayism.” She defines it as a pessimistic view of life and the economy, focusing on what’s going wrong.
“It’s a very attractive philosophy for people because it sort of removes agency from your life,” said Scanlon, who wanted to give her audience a better understanding of what Wall Street is doing. Hot issues, including the job market, inflation and recent bank failures.
As of later this week, Scanlon had nearly 166,000 followers on TikTok, more than 156,000 on Twitter and 28,000 subscribers on YouTube.
