Social Media's Influence on Investment Decisions : A qualitative study based on an individual’s financial literacy

Abstract: With the current technological trends pointing to people having more capabilities to independently manage their financial future, the financial knowledge a person possesses will become evermore essential to create a sustainable financial future. Simultaneously, the growth of social media platforms and users have substantially increased over the past ten years, which has allowed people to find and create countless types of content. The potential problem culminating from these trends is that people who do not have the necessary financial knowledge to make educated investment decisions will have the opportunity to do so. Furthermore, if people have a lack of understanding about financial concepts, supplementing their lack of knowledge with information and recommendations from social media could lead to people making investment decisions based on unknown individuals' opinions. As a result, this study aims to determine if there is a connection between the financial literacy a person possesses and the usage of social media. We found that the financial literacy of university students in Sweden was not a determinant of social media influences on their investment decisions. Despite this overall conclusion, it was apparent that every participant in this study had been influenced by social media in some capacity when making investment decisions whether they intentionally or unintentionally used social media as a reference or unexpected circumstance.