Those purchases “can often hurt our finances more than benefit our lives in the way we think they would on social media,” said Sarah Foster, an analyst at Bankrate in the blog of this financial.
But social networks not only cause worse purchase decision making. They also seem to be to blame for younger people feeling more guilty and sad about their financial situation.
The explanation, according to the Bankrate study, would be that Instagram and Tik-Tok cause unrealistic comparisons between the wealth that influencers appear to have and that which young people themselves have.
“Influencers play a significant role in the pressure to make impulse purchases on social media platforms. A lot of people feel that they, too, could be just as glamorous if they just had that coveted swimsuit or pair of shoes,” says Foster, one of the study’s authors.
Forty-four percent of millennials surveyed indicated that social media made them feel bad about their appearance, but also about how successful they are in their careers, home, and relationship situations.
“Social networks distort reality in the sense that they give their best and sometimes portray unrealistic versions of themselves (…) You don’t know if someone went into a lot of debt to finance that incredible vacation (…) This can lead to some kind of competition,” says Ted Rossman, senior credit card industry analyst at Bankrate.