The following is shared from The Broken Marketplace:
The Broken Marketplace: America’s School-to-Work Crisis study highlights a trend that workforce professionals may already be seeing anecdotally: young adults are turning to social media as one of their primary sources for identity exploration and career insight.
According to the study, today’s young adults use platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram not just for entertainment, but as places to understand themselves, explore interests, and learn about potential career paths. In fact:
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72% use social media to explore their interests
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40% actively seek career-related content
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85% of those who watch career content say it leaves them feeling inspired
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Social media ranks higher than school-based resources in helping youth learn about themselves
Many young people describe finding real value in short “day in the life” videos, explanations of different roles, and practical content about how to get started in a field. And yet, parents, teachers, counselors, and workforce professionals have barely acknowledged this shift:
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Only 16% of parents encourage social media as a resource for young adults
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Only 22% of educators, counselors, and workforce professionals do
This disconnect matters because it points to a widening gap between how young adults naturally explore pathways and how the system assumes exploration should happen. When traditional career supports feel inaccessible, outdated, or slow to adapt, young adults gravitate to the tools that feel immediate, relatable, and tailored to them.
For workforce professionals, this trend presents an emerging opportunity. Not necessarily to create more content, but to better understand the channels youth already trust. Social media is filling a gap in the guidance landscape, whether we acknowledge it or not. There is room for innovative workforce strategies that build on this behavior, meet young adults where they are, or use social media insights to complement traditional advising.