70% of US Teens Want to Invest, Schwab Finds

Highlights

70% of US teens ages 13-17 say they are very or extremely interested in investing, per Charles Schwab's 2026 Teen Investing Survey.
95% of teens say they are at least somewhat interested in learning more about investing, and 73% of parents say it's important their teens learn the skill.
Teens cite building wealth (45%) and paying for college (34%) as their top motivations, with parents as their most trusted source of advice.
The findings point to a generation entering brokerage platforms earlier than any before it, with direct implications for who tomorrow's crypto and equity investors will be.

Seven in 10 American teenagers, 70%, say they are very or extremely interested in investing, according to Charles Schwab's own 2026 Teen Investing Survey, a finding that points to a meaningfully earlier starting line for retail market participation than prior generations experienced. The figure comes from an online survey conducted by Logica Research between October 13 and October 27, 2025, covering a national sample of 2,000 Americans split evenly between 1,000 parents of teenagers and 1,000 teens themselves. The breadth of interest goes further than the headline number suggests: 95% of teens said they are at least somewhat interested in learning more about investing, suggesting the appetite extends well past the group already actively engaged.

What's Driving Teen Interest

Schwab's survey found teens' motivations for wanting to invest are notably practical rather than speculative. The two most commonly cited reasons were simply wanting more money, at 45%, and saving to pay for college, at 34%, framing investing as a long-term financial tool rather than a shortcut to quick gains. That framing matters for how the industry should read this data: it suggests today's teens are approaching markets with a savings-and-growth mindset shaped by watching their families navigate a high-cost-of-living, high-tuition environment, not a generation chasing meme-stock or memecoin-style windfalls.

Parents appear to be reinforcing that mindset directly. Teens named parents as their most trusted source of investing advice, with 56% citing them above any other source, including financial advisors, social media or teachers. About 27% of teens said they want their parents heavily involved in their investing experience, indicating that the family unit, rather than schools or online communities, remains the primary channel through which financial habits are being formed. On the parent side, 73% said it is very important for their teens to learn about investing, a strong signal that financial literacy has become a deliberate parenting priority rather than something left to chance.

Why This Matters Beyond the Survey

The practical effect of this shift is that brokerages and, by extension, crypto platforms are gaining access to a pipeline of future customers years earlier than they historically did. Schwab has responded by rolling out a dedicated Teen Investor account product, and the survey data suggests demand for that kind of early-access account is genuine rather than manufactured by marketing. For crypto specifically, a generation that grows comfortable with brokerage apps, portfolio tracking and market terminology as teenagers is a generation more likely to treat crypto exchanges and tokenized products as a natural extension of investing rather than a separate, riskier category to be approached later in life. Retail platforms that have spent recent years building crypto trading directly into mainstream brokerage apps stand to benefit disproportionately from a cohort that starts investing this young, since the habits and platform loyalties formed at 15 or 16 tend to persist well into adulthood. That dynamic is already visible in broader flow data, with crypto funds posting their best inflow week since October 2025, and in platform moves like X's own reported push toward native crypto trade buttons aimed squarely at younger, social-media-native users.

There is a competitive dimension here too. As more teens gain hands-on investing experience through custodial or teen-specific accounts, the platforms that capture that early relationship, whether through a Schwab-branded teen product, a Robinhood account opened jointly with a parent, or a crypto-native app aimed at younger users, gain a durable advantage in customer lifetime value. That is a strategic prize worth competing for, since today's 14-year-old opening a first custodial account is potentially a decades-long customer for whichever platform earns that initial trust.

What to Watch Next

The next data point worth tracking is whether this stated interest converts into actual account openings at scale, particularly as more brokerages roll out teen and custodial account products through 2026 and 2027. If Schwab's findings hold up in account-opening data from Robinhood, Fidelity and crypto-native platforms courting younger users, it would mark one of the more significant demographic shifts in retail investing in years, with implications for everything from long-term equity flows to how quickly crypto adoption spreads through the youngest cohort of eligible investors.

FAQ

What percentage of teens are interested in investing, according to Schwab?
Charles Schwab's 2026 Teen Investing Survey found 70% of US teens ages 13-17 say they are very or extremely interested in investing.

Why do teens want to start investing?
The top two motivations teens cited were wanting more money, at 45%, and saving to pay for college, at 34%, according to the Schwab survey.

Who do teens trust most for investing advice?
56% of teens named their parents as their most trusted source of investing advice, more than any financial advisor, teacher or online source.

Does teen interest in investing matter for crypto adoption?
A generation that grows comfortable with brokerage apps and investing concepts as teenagers is more likely to treat crypto trading as a natural extension of investing later on, which platforms building crypto into mainstream brokerage apps stand to benefit from.