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.
Not necessarily a high quality poll, but it corroborates other polls (Credit Karma did a similar poll a year ago) and surveys done on both how much Gen Z thinks they’ll make in their careers and how much they think is a fair salary. Financial therapists have reflected this sentiment from patients, terming it “money dysphoria,” the WSJ did an article on this topic using separate findings and analyzed the relationship to social media, and there have been academic treatments on the phenomenon in PLOS and Collabra: Psychology, and Morning Consult also did a separate study showing 57% of Gen Z aspire to be influencers.
In terms of generational cohorts, Gen Z is considered by scholars very distinctive. Some of those characteristics are considered positive, but many, arguably most, of them are considered cause for concern. I’m not going to defend or litigate how our generation(s) are considered, but the rough vibe of this piece seems to generally reflect a common sentiment in Z, for better or worse. The gap between perception and reality can become very warped for the terminally online and the social-media obsessed, and I think that’s true for all generations, but no other generation had that effect rampant in their lives during important developmental stages of childhood.
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.
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.
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.
Basically, the data is near-worthless.
Not necessarily a high quality poll, but it corroborates other polls (Credit Karma did a similar poll a year ago) and surveys done on both how much Gen Z thinks they’ll make in their careers and how much they think is a fair salary. Financial therapists have reflected this sentiment from patients, terming it “money dysphoria,” the WSJ did an article on this topic using separate findings and analyzed the relationship to social media, and there have been academic treatments on the phenomenon in PLOS and Collabra: Psychology, and Morning Consult also did a separate study showing 57% of Gen Z aspire to be influencers.
In terms of generational cohorts, Gen Z is considered by scholars very distinctive. Some of those characteristics are considered positive, but many, arguably most, of them are considered cause for concern. I’m not going to defend or litigate how our generation(s) are considered, but the rough vibe of this piece seems to generally reflect a common sentiment in Z, for better or worse. The gap between perception and reality can become very warped for the terminally online and the social-media obsessed, and I think that’s true for all generations, but no other generation had that effect rampant in their lives during important developmental stages of childhood.
Wait, half of Gen Z says they want to be an influencer? Where are you getting this info?
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.
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.