Here's What Facebook Knows About Young People And Money

They’re scared of debt, and not big fans of investing (unless it’s done by robots).

Happy Couple With Piggybank

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Facebook knows a lot about young people — information it gathers and analyzes to shape its product and to let advertisers know who they can reach. On Monday, the company is sharing a snapshot of that knowledge, focused on what people aged 21 to 34 think about money and finance.

Researchers at the social network have put together a a white paper on the topic, using survey data, the company's own Audience Insights tool, and analysis of conversations and content on Facebook itself.

The study was done to help "financial services marketers understand what millennials on Facebook talk and care about," Facebook's Industry Director Jerry Canning said. Young Facebook users tend to be "first-adopters of new technology and are driving the changes that are shaping the future of banking," Canning said.

From Venmo to Robin Hood, Wealthfront and Affirm, there are a bevy of fast-growing financial services apps that offer everything from investment advice to money transfers, with a tech-heavy spin. They're all marketed to young people, and some of them are big advertisers on Facebook.

Even Facebook Messenger offers person-to-person payments (all of Facebook's messaging products are run by David Marcus, who prior to joining the social network was the president of PayPal, the most successful financial company of the last tech boom).

Here's what Facebook's study had to say about young people and money:

There are lots of affluent young people on Facebook

Kazuhiro Nogi / AFP / Getty Images

Two-thirds of the 70 million Facebook users in the US aged 21 to 34 are college graduates, more than half of them own a home, and 46% have a household income of over $75,000.

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