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On TikTok, Preparing for a Recession Is a Vibe
By Adam Hardy MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
Economic anxiety is trending: More than 130,000 videos now use the hashtags #recession or #recessionproof.
In March, just days before President Donald Trump declared a national emergency over the U.S. trade deficit that sent markets plummeting, Kim Casamento was browsing the aisles of a tiny thrift shop in Wayne, New Jersey.
In passing, another customer told Casamento, 32, that she had recently found an original Martha Stewart cookbook that she’d resold for $500. Casamento didn’t know much about vintage cookbooks, but she decided to scan the shelves anyway.
That’s when she found it: The $7 a Meal Cookbook, a 2008 guide to feeding a family of four for $7 or less during the Great Recession. (Spoiler alert: The recipes cost far more than $7 in 2025.)
“The price of everything is skyrocketing these days. Gas prices, commodities futures and the economy in general are forcing food prices up sharply,” wrote the author, Linda Larsen, in the introduction. “We have to take control of our budgets.”
Seventeen years have passed. But with universal tariffs now in effect and Trump’s tit-for-tat trade war dashing consumer sentiment, the cookbook reads like it could have been written yesterday.
“I saw that cookbook and was like, you know what, this is going to be my TikTok,” Casamento says. Also known as saltandvibes on the popular video-sharing site, she is one of a growing number of social media content creators who have developed a unique and timely niche: sharing tips online about preparing for a potential recession.
Trending now: recession prep
As economic uncertainty grips America, financial advice about everything from avoiding panic buying to predicting whether you’re about to get laid off are starting to take over internet feeds. Participants range from Vivian Tu, a popular “finfluencer” with 2.7 million followers on TikTok alone, to smaller creators just hoping to get a piece of the action.
“We don’t panic during recessions, we prepare for them,” said TikToker itzettromero, who’s been posting videos with recession advice in recent weeks. (Among her suggestions: Gen Zers should seek advice from millennials, immigrants or people who grew up low-income since they know how to weather financial turmoil. Make shopping lists and stick to them. Include cheap, quick and versatile tuna on said shopping lists.)
Some recession-prep videos, like Casamento’s, have surprisingly glitzy production value. Others, like itzettromero’s, are soaked in dark humor and jokes about young people once again facing another “once-in-a-lifetime” event.
Casamento’s videos put Larsen’s recipes to the test — not only for flavor but also by comparing grocery prices circa 2008 to 2025, all the while sharing helpful tips for cooking on a budget. She plans on making 30 recession recipe videos in 30 days.
While preparing for a recession may sound stodgy, Casamento’s videos are anything but. They feature ultra close-ups of gooey chocolate oatmeal cookies, crispy homemade parmesan potato chips and fluffy scrambled eggs. Her camerawork makes the recipes look delicious, even if she rates some of them a 2 out of 10 for taste.
About a dozen recipes into her project, Casamento has already racked up nearly 700,000 views and sparked numerous conversations with her viewers about the state of the economy.
“Most of my audience is women, so they’re the caretakers. They’re the ones going grocery shopping,” she says. “Whether we’re headed into a recession or not, a lot of people have opinions saying that they already think we’re in one.”
This type of content is resonating with young Americans — and proliferating. On TikTok, more than 130,000 videos now use the hashtags #recession or #recessionproof.
Bad vibes or something worse?
To be clear, a recession has not officially been declared in the U.S. The National Bureau of Economic Research, or NBER, is the group that makes that call once it sees “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months,” according to its website.
While we have not reached that threshold, many people aren’t feeling good about the economy right now, notes Sofia Baig, economist at Morning Consult. And it’s not just folks on TikTok.
April survey results from the University of Michigan show that consumer confidence in the economy is lower now than it was during the Great Recession (December 2007 to June 2009). The reading indicates that everyday Americans are increasingly worried about losing their jobs, expect inflation to tick up and believe their incomes will fall.
Meanwhile, J.P. Morgan recently raised its prediction of a recession in 2025 from 40% to 60%. Goldman Sachs did much the same, raising its recession probability prediction from 35% to 45%. The uncertainty has been reflected in the stock market, with prices cratering and spiking ever since Trump announced widespread tariffs.
Right now, those are mainly measures of how people feel about the economy and not a reflection of economic performance. The latest reports from the Departments of Labor and Commerce show the unemployment rate (4.2%), inflation rate (2.4%) and gross domestic product (2.4%) all within healthy ranges. Actual economic threats loom, of course; namely, ones related to Trump’s trade war that could affect unemployment, inflation and GDP.
Still, people’s expectations themselves can be an important indicator.
“It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Baig says. If people feel bad enough about the economy, they might spend less. “If people spend less, then that slows down the economy.”
Theoretically, if the recession prepping trend — or full-blown fearmongering — on social media got big enough, it could cause people to change their spending habits, potentially adding to the likelihood of a recession. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, Baig says. For now, many of the videos are harmless, if not helpful.
“In spending data, it’s a pretty rosy picture,” she says. “We’re not really seeing things slow down yet.”
In fact, she says, Morning Consult data consistently shows younger people are the ones spending the most on discretionary purchases, like entertainment, dining out and leisure activities.
While a lot of people may be sharing their bleak feelings about the economy in surveys and on social media, the hard economic data is currently looking pretty stable. Baig says she doesn’t think that all the recession prep on TikTok portends a real recession — not yet, at least.
“I think it might just be vibes,” she adds, “and it might not actually correlate into action.”
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Adam Hardy is Money's lead data journalist. He writes news and feature stories aimed at helping everyday people manage their finances. He joined Money full-time in 2021 but has covered personal finance and economic topics since 2018. Previously, he worked for Forbes Advisor, The Penny Hoarder and Creative Loafing. In addition to those outlets, Adam’s work has been featured in a variety of local, national and international publications, including the Asia Times, Business Insider, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Yahoo! Finance, Nasdaq and several others. Adam graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida, where he studied magazine journalism and sociology. As a first-generation college graduate from a low-income, single-parent household, Adam understands firsthand the financial barriers that plague low-income Americans. His reporting aims to illuminate these issues. Since joining Money, Adam has already written over 300 articles, including a cover story on financial surveillance, a profile of Director Rohit Chopra of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and an investigation into flexible spending accounts, which found that workers forfeit billions of dollars annually through the workplace plans. He has also led data analysis on some of Money’s marquee rankings, including Best Places to Live, Best Places to Travel and Best Hospitals. He regularly contributes data reporting for Best Colleges, Best Banks and other lists as well. Adam also holds a multimedia storytelling certificate from Poynter’s News University and a data journalism certificate from the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) at the University of Missouri. In 2017, he received an English teaching certification from the University of Cambridge, which he utilized during his time in Seoul, South Korea. There, he taught students of all ages, from 5 to 65, and worked with North Korean refugees who were resettling in the area. Now, Adam lives in Saint Petersburg, Florida, with his pup Bambi. He is a card-carrying shuffleboard club member.