Central bankers are like the tooth fairy: Their policies work only if the public believes in them. That trust was recently tarnished by the inflation crisis, when people in many countries felt as if they went to bed with a tooth under their pillow, then woke up not to a gift but to more missing teeth. So to rebuild trust – particularly with younger generations who haven’t felt much warmth from monetary policy in their lifetimes – the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and beyond are trying their hand at marketing and influencing on social media.

The central banks recognise that Gen Z and millennials get much of their news from social media and have little patience for inscrutable speeches laden with talk of basis points and “second-round effects”. That’s led roughly 100 of them to establish a presence on Instagram: As of December 2023 (the most recent available data) the number was up by more than a third from two years earlier, according to the Central Bank Directory, an annual guide.

Bloomberg Businessweek