From what I could track down, here is all the available data on the polling methodology:
The Empower “Secret to Success” study is based on online survey responses from 2,203 Americans ages 18+ fielded by Morning Consult from September 13-14, 2024. The survey is weighted to be nationally representative of U.S. adults (aged 18+).
It also comes not from a polling company, but from a company that provides financial news, and financial services. No potential conflict of interest there…
Gen Z’s financial ambitions, and the dissonance between their dreams and reality, honestly highlight a troubling cultural shift that I’m sure, if we’re honest, we all recognize. This poll, while maybe not bulletproof in methodology, lines up with other findings from Credit Karma, other Morning Consult surveys, and academic sources like PLOS and Collabra: Psychology. The term “money dysphoria,” used by financial therapists, gets to the heart of the issue, which is a mismatch between the paychecks, fame, and wealth many envision and the actual economic terrain we’re navigating. The fact that more than half of Gen Z reportedly wants to be influencers points to a broader trend where social media distorts not only career goals but also broader ideas about value and success.
Researchers see Gen Z as unique—sometimes in ways worth celebrating, but more often in ways that are troubling. Every generation wrestles with the pressures of its time, but Gen Z is the only generation that spent critical childhood-development years under a spotlight powered by social algorithms, constantly fed by curated images and endless comparisons. It seems obvious this environment is going to shape approaches to work, wealth, and purpose, often in ways that are kind of adrift from reality. What stands out here isn’t just misplaced optimism; it’s the fallout of growing up in an ecosystem designed to blur the lines between aspiration and delusion.
This isn’t to pin dysfunction entirely on Z; after all, no one chooses the world they inherit. But the extent to which our formative years were shaped by this digital distortion makes the challenges uniquely sharp. Gen Z was effectively raised in a hall of mirrors. That’s going to have an effect. And honestly, when I’m talking with from Gen Z about it, we tend to either completely agree and are pretty worried about it, or some people absolutely deny it and get pretty angry about it.
I think if you’re honest with yourself and are in college, you can kind of look around your classrooms and see who is going to feel which way.
I’m in Canada rather than the US, but I personally see it very little of it, except for those who are on the tail end of GenZ. In my experience, most of GenZ (with the possible exception of those still in high-school or early post-secondary) are primarily disgusted by the sort of opulent displays of weath common in influencer culture. If anything, I could see the ridiculously high numbers reflecting a distrust in the economy after living through multiple large financial crisis, and even-increasing costs of living moreso than a direct worship of weath. For example, if they assume a 5% annual increase in cost-of-living over the next 20 years, and want to be making the current equivalent of an 100k salary, they’ll expect to need to make about 265k. If they worry that the economy could crash at any point, it wouldn’t be weird for them to feel the need to aquire more weath faster to prepare. Thats not to say there is no worship of weath and fame, but thats also not new. Before the internet, it was reality tv, and before that, magazine and newspapers. I mean, look at Donald Trump even - he got where he is not because of an education or anything but because he used his existing fame to springboard him into power. Even before that, think of the worship of the British monarchy and the facination people have with their drama. The only new part is the algorithms, but their widespread use and monitization only really caught the tail-end of GenZ when they were young and its mostly Gen Alpha growing up knowing nothing else.
no… it’s worth shitloads. Just not to the people reading it. It’s worth it to the people that pay Fortune to run adds like these to get rubes trying to day trade on the markets or some other shit like that.
It looks like with some of their other stuff, they do provide more methodology, but given that the only methodology provided here is the fact that it was an online survey, and the sample size was 2203 (of very roughly 300,000,000) it doesn’t give us much meaninful to go off of. Notably, they also exclude anyone under 18 in the polls (or attempt to, given that this is online with no indication of how their sample was selected) which is a significant portion of those the sample is meant to represent. Given that thats all we really know, we can’t really get a meaninful idea of what the original data was, or how accurate the drawn conclusions are.
A thought I had was, that this might be a paid online poll. The answers might reflect the true feelings of the demographic that makes it a hustle to respond to those. Anyway, from my personal experience, the results are not obviously wrong. I matured before influencer culture became big. To me, it was always people playing pretend; a form of online role-playing; another thing I never got into. I feel that those a bit younger, who grew up with influencer culture, simply did not develop a world model where that distinction exists. Of course, these topics don’t come up in casual conversation, and on the internet you never really know someone’s age.
A thought I had was, that this might be a paid online poll. The answers might reflect the true feelings of the demographic that makes it a hustle to respond to those.
Its probably something like this, but theres a lot of more significant potential pitfalls with an online poll. For example, at least in my circles, is basically common knowledge that its a good idea to take these polls whenever you get the chance, but answer what they want to hear so you don’t get screened out. Similarly, theres lying about age. Even just how the question was asked could have a huge impact; “How much will you have to earn to be financially successful?” is a different question to “how much do you have to earn to be financially successful?” given that one implies future or continued wealth while the other implies current costs. But again, none of this was specified, so we’re making assumptions - instead we should take only the information that was provided. So little is given, it could have been run by, for example, emailing their mailing list subscriber with the poll and offering a raffle entry for each submission, or hell, even something like a Twitter poll. That would still match their given methodology.
Anyway, from my personal experience, the results are not obviously wrong. I matured before influencer culture became big. To me, it was always people playing pretend; a form of online role-playing; another thing I never got into. I feel that those a bit younger, who grew up with influencer culture, simply did not develop a world model where that distinction exists. Of course, these topics don’t come up in casual conversation, and on the internet you never really know someone’s age.
For claification, I’m Canadian, not American, so my experiences will be a bit different. That said, I’ve experienced this some with Gen Alpha, but not really GenZ. Keep in mind, GenZ is at least age 15, and averaging around 23: still young, but already starting to come to terms with income and costs of living. Most people this age are from before the current influencer economy, and even then, they are going out into the world now and usually learning the value of money quickly. If anything, I think the ridiculously high number given in the poll (if taken seriously) is just as much or more an indication of the expectations for rising costs of living, instability, and inflation. GenZ is old enough to understand these concepts and have seen how they affected the world, likely in 2008, and definately during covid. Its not like this sort of toxic worship of money is anything new or unique either - think of the reality shows that were popular before they moved to the internet, for example, and all the tabloids and drama that teens and young adults followed even before that.
From what I could track down, here is all the available data on the polling methodology:
It also comes not from a polling company, but from a company that provides financial news, and financial services. No potential conflict of interest there…
Basically, the data is near-worthless.
Gen Z’s financial ambitions, and the dissonance between their dreams and reality, honestly highlight a troubling cultural shift that I’m sure, if we’re honest, we all recognize. This poll, while maybe not bulletproof in methodology, lines up with other findings from Credit Karma, other Morning Consult surveys, and academic sources like PLOS and Collabra: Psychology. The term “money dysphoria,” used by financial therapists, gets to the heart of the issue, which is a mismatch between the paychecks, fame, and wealth many envision and the actual economic terrain we’re navigating. The fact that more than half of Gen Z reportedly wants to be influencers points to a broader trend where social media distorts not only career goals but also broader ideas about value and success.
Researchers see Gen Z as unique—sometimes in ways worth celebrating, but more often in ways that are troubling. Every generation wrestles with the pressures of its time, but Gen Z is the only generation that spent critical childhood-development years under a spotlight powered by social algorithms, constantly fed by curated images and endless comparisons. It seems obvious this environment is going to shape approaches to work, wealth, and purpose, often in ways that are kind of adrift from reality. What stands out here isn’t just misplaced optimism; it’s the fallout of growing up in an ecosystem designed to blur the lines between aspiration and delusion.
This isn’t to pin dysfunction entirely on Z; after all, no one chooses the world they inherit. But the extent to which our formative years were shaped by this digital distortion makes the challenges uniquely sharp. Gen Z was effectively raised in a hall of mirrors. That’s going to have an effect. And honestly, when I’m talking with from Gen Z about it, we tend to either completely agree and are pretty worried about it, or some people absolutely deny it and get pretty angry about it.
I think if you’re honest with yourself and are in college, you can kind of look around your classrooms and see who is going to feel which way.
I’m in Canada rather than the US, but I personally see it very little of it, except for those who are on the tail end of GenZ. In my experience, most of GenZ (with the possible exception of those still in high-school or early post-secondary) are primarily disgusted by the sort of opulent displays of weath common in influencer culture. If anything, I could see the ridiculously high numbers reflecting a distrust in the economy after living through multiple large financial crisis, and even-increasing costs of living moreso than a direct worship of weath. For example, if they assume a 5% annual increase in cost-of-living over the next 20 years, and want to be making the current equivalent of an 100k salary, they’ll expect to need to make about 265k. If they worry that the economy could crash at any point, it wouldn’t be weird for them to feel the need to aquire more weath faster to prepare. Thats not to say there is no worship of weath and fame, but thats also not new. Before the internet, it was reality tv, and before that, magazine and newspapers. I mean, look at Donald Trump even - he got where he is not because of an education or anything but because he used his existing fame to springboard him into power. Even before that, think of the worship of the British monarchy and the facination people have with their drama. The only new part is the algorithms, but their widespread use and monitization only really caught the tail-end of GenZ when they were young and its mostly Gen Alpha growing up knowing nothing else.
Wait, half of Gen Z says they want to be an influencer? Where are you getting this info?
no… it’s worth shitloads. Just not to the people reading it. It’s worth it to the people that pay Fortune to run adds like these to get rubes trying to day trade on the markets or some other shit like that.
They’ve been doing polls since at least the 2016 presidential election. I just don’t know if they are any good.
It looks like with some of their other stuff, they do provide more methodology, but given that the only methodology provided here is the fact that it was an online survey, and the sample size was 2203 (of very roughly 300,000,000) it doesn’t give us much meaninful to go off of. Notably, they also exclude anyone under 18 in the polls (or attempt to, given that this is online with no indication of how their sample was selected) which is a significant portion of those the sample is meant to represent. Given that thats all we really know, we can’t really get a meaninful idea of what the original data was, or how accurate the drawn conclusions are.
A thought I had was, that this might be a paid online poll. The answers might reflect the true feelings of the demographic that makes it a hustle to respond to those. Anyway, from my personal experience, the results are not obviously wrong. I matured before influencer culture became big. To me, it was always people playing pretend; a form of online role-playing; another thing I never got into. I feel that those a bit younger, who grew up with influencer culture, simply did not develop a world model where that distinction exists. Of course, these topics don’t come up in casual conversation, and on the internet you never really know someone’s age.
Its probably something like this, but theres a lot of more significant potential pitfalls with an online poll. For example, at least in my circles, is basically common knowledge that its a good idea to take these polls whenever you get the chance, but answer what they want to hear so you don’t get screened out. Similarly, theres lying about age. Even just how the question was asked could have a huge impact; “How much will you have to earn to be financially successful?” is a different question to “how much do you have to earn to be financially successful?” given that one implies future or continued wealth while the other implies current costs. But again, none of this was specified, so we’re making assumptions - instead we should take only the information that was provided. So little is given, it could have been run by, for example, emailing their mailing list subscriber with the poll and offering a raffle entry for each submission, or hell, even something like a Twitter poll. That would still match their given methodology.
For claification, I’m Canadian, not American, so my experiences will be a bit different. That said, I’ve experienced this some with Gen Alpha, but not really GenZ. Keep in mind, GenZ is at least age 15, and averaging around 23: still young, but already starting to come to terms with income and costs of living. Most people this age are from before the current influencer economy, and even then, they are going out into the world now and usually learning the value of money quickly. If anything, I think the ridiculously high number given in the poll (if taken seriously) is just as much or more an indication of the expectations for rising costs of living, instability, and inflation. GenZ is old enough to understand these concepts and have seen how they affected the world, likely in 2008, and definately during covid. Its not like this sort of toxic worship of money is anything new or unique either - think of the reality shows that were popular before they moved to the internet, for example, and all the tabloids and drama that teens and young adults followed even before that.