TikTok and Instagram are respectively used as the source of new investment ideas for 16% and 22% of investors aged between 18 and 34-year-olds, leading experts to warn about the dangers of scammers and 'nefarious finfluencers'.
As well as TikTok, 16% of younger investors also use investment ideas from X, 18% get them from Reddit and 19% from Facebook.
The research was carried out among 2,000 investors last month by Opinium on behalf of Hargreaves Lansdown.
It comes in the same week that Parliament's influential Treasury Committee was told that scammers using "influencing" techniques were targeting this younger demographic and raising the risk of fraud among those aged under 40.
The Treasury Committee session heard from Lucy Castledine, FCA director of consumer investments, and Steve Smart, the FCA's joint executive director for enforcement and market oversight, who between the outlined how scammers had taken to finfluencing after legislative crackdowns meant they moved from running boiler room scams or pension cold calling scams.
With social media platforms putting rules in place so that paid-for posts have to be placed by authorised financial firms, this has resulted in a rise of 'organic' posts being made by scammers, many of whom are based overseas and so harder to prosecute.
Once a scam account is blocked, criminals use a technique known as 'life-boating' where a similarly named account takes up the content within hours. The FCA's Castledine told the committee that the platforms have the technology to identify this behaviour, so they could be doing more to protect users.
"There are plenty of good actors in this space, offering sensible guidance from regulated people, but there are also a worrying number of people using this approach to defraud their victims," said Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at Hargreaves Lansdown.
She says "nefarious finfluencers are finding ways" to work around the steps the UK financial watchdog is taking to crack down on financial fraud through online platforms, and the measures that social media platforms have put in place.
"If you are seeing this kind of content online, ask yourself whether your expert really is an expert," suggested Coles.
"There are plenty of people working for regulated businesses, or as independent professionals, who have built up vast banks of knowledge and experience – like financial journalists.
"However, on social media, there are others who aren’t regulated or qualified. They may not have much experience either.
"There’s also plenty of content from people who are famous for other reasons, dipping their toe in money matters, but just because you’ve heard of them, it doesn’t make them an expert in this area."
High numbers of followers can be misleading too, said Coles, as being good at social media "doesn’t say anything about their financial expertise".
"It can feel like a social media influencer, operating outside the traditional financial services industry, has uncovered a hack that breaks all the rules of finances to give you a head start. They may, for example, say they’ve found a way of making huge returns without taking a big risk.
"However, it’s far more likely they have misunderstood something or are deliberately misleading you.
"They may also be talking up the benefits of an asset they already hold, in an effort to ramp up the price. The same basic rules apply to us all – higher potential rewards always come with a higher risk of loss."