Social media has made information on the economy ‘really accessible,’ TikTok creator says

Kyla Scanlon, a researcher and educator, joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss creating finance-related content on TikTok, explaining macroeconomic trends, and how social media can help investors educate themselves.

Video Transcript

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BRIAN CHEUNG: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. Let's check in on some social media stocks as we get a little bit closer to the noon hour here in trading on the East Coast. You can see shares of Meta, Twitter, Snap doing relatively well today. Some of this drift on the overall markets, which remain in the green on this Friday morning.

But on the theme of social media, one impact that some of these apps such as TikTok have is kind of the economic outlook. And in fact, it's not unusual to see that recession is very much a part of the conversation on TikTok. Let's bring in one person who's creating content, also engaging with those on the social media platform. Kyla Scanlon is someone you may have noticed on the platform.

Kyla, great to have you on the program this morning. You also had an op-ed in "The New York Times" that got a lot of attention. The vibes in the economy are weird, really weird, was the title of the essay. Give us a bit of a breakdown of exactly what you're trying to communicate here and the interest that you've had in these topics based off of your engagement on TikTok.

KYLA SCANLON: Yeah, yeah, so the piece that I wrote in "The New York Times" was a play on my piece that I wrote for my personal Substack called "The Vibecession." And basically, I've just been getting a lot of comments because I make TikToks about the economy, and they've been really interesting indicators of sentiment. And I thought it'd be an interesting time to kind of write along for a piece about that. And it definitely got both positive and negative feedback. But yeah, that was kind of the goal of it.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Well, aside from the feedback, I mean, the point of your piece is kind of something that's been talked about a lot about in the economic community, which is that how people feel impacts the way that the economic data could actually unfold.

And I think that one example, for example, is the University of Michigan data that we got this morning, consumer sentiment. It's just some arbitrary number, but it's kind of exactly that, right? It's measuring the vibes. So what do you feel like is the vibe out there now? And does it square with how people are talking about the r-word, recession?

KYLA SCANLON: Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, vibes are just reflexivity animal spirits. It's all the same thing. I would say that the vibes have definitely improved over the past few weeks. Like, we've seen gas prices go down. We've seen a little bit of recovery in food prices. Seeing a little bit of recovery in the housing market.

So I think things have definitely gotten-- people are feeling a little bit better. Inflation expectations are starting to tick down. So I think all of that is going to help the vibes continue to improve more, but I would definitely say there's just still broad uncertainty out there, yeah.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Yeah, you know--

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BRIAN CHEUNG: I was going to say, I mean, on the bit of uncertainty, you have Jay Powell, right, the Federal Reserve chairman, kind of coming out here and saying, we're not in a recession, or at least, he didn't think so last time we had the chance to ask him in late July. But at the end of the day, you do have some worried that maybe the Federal Reserve is glossing it over a little bit because you have other central bank governors, like in the United Kingdom, for example, just straight up projecting that they're in a recession.

How much of the importance of maybe optimism, even if it's not necessarily warranted by the underlying data, factors into how we all perceive the economy? Do you think it's good for policymakers to kind of come out here and say things are going to be OK, even if things are kind of starting to not be all that OK?

KYLA SCANLON: Yeah, I mean, I think it's important for the Fed to maintain credibility. So I don't know if optimism is always the equation for them to do that. I think they're largely like, OK, we just need to keep everything going the way that it's sort of been going and make sure people are feeling OK, because that means, like, one of their monetary policy tools is going to work a little bit better probably if people believe what they're going to do.

So I think that the data here in the United States, like jobs are still relatively strong. We have seen a recovery sort of in inflation metrics. So I think there is a reason to be optimistic moving forward. I don't know if central bankers saying that things are-- like, you've seen-- we've had a little bit of Fed speak this week where some of them have said a recession could be coming. So I think you get a mix of sentiment from them.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Yeah, they've all kind of been like, well, the possibility is there, but we don't think that we're in one right now. Now, if we just talk about the social media aspect of all of this right now, right, you're putting content out there on TikTok. I would encourage a lot of people to go out there and give you a follow. You're also very good on Twitter.

But at the same time, you're getting a lot of engagement on this. Are you kind of surprised by how interested people are about the psychology of recession and what's happening in this weird economy? Because I've actually personally been a little bit surprised by it.

KYLA SCANLON: Yeah, I mean, I think it makes sense. Like, social media has definitely made it really accessible to get information on the economy. I think what we had happen with GameStop, even though that was relatively long ago now, that definitely got a lot more people interested.

And I think that with social media, you're just so much more aware of what's going on. And what is the Fed? What are interest rates? What are all these things that are happening? So I think now people have the tools to explore what they might have not been able to explore previously without social media. But yeah, the interest is pretty interesting. There's a lot of interest.

BRIAN CHEUNG: And you mentioned at the top. I mean, it's a little bit controversial, too. I mean, people are very sensitive right now. If you have a headline that says one thing and people perceive it to be the other way, then that's going to cause a little bit of argument. I imagine your comment section can be a little bit of a mess right now. I mean, how do you kind of parse through that noise to make sure that the message that you're getting out there is thematic to the vibes that are out there without either causing a panic or being disingenuous over what the actual data is telling us?

KYLA SCANLON: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's super important that people feel like their lived experience is being recognized. Like, I think that's why we had so much anger on Twitter over, like, 0% inflation because people are like, no, inflation is still here. How could it be 0% in the month of July? That doesn't make sense.

So I think a lot of the anger kind of comes from that, where it's like, oh, the data doesn't match my lived reality. So the way that I try to do my TikTok is just be as objective as possible and just sort of talk about data. But yeah, there's a lot of nuance to it. And social media doesn't always reward nuance in the way that you would maybe want it to. So yeah, it's always a challenge.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Are you team month over month or team year over year?

KYLA SCANLON: Month over month, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think they're both important. They both have a role. But yeah, I mean, inflation was 0%, it was in July.

BRIAN CHEUNG: And it was. And that's just simply a fact, but Kyla Scanlon. By the way, you can follow her on TikTok at @kylascan. Really appreciate you stopping by the program. Have a great weekend. Appreciate it.