What’s next for inflation

Hello from SurveyMonkey, and welcome to this week’s research newsletter! In this installment, we’re sharing a round-up of our latest polling data in the news. 

This week we released a new poll on financial literacy with CNBC that examines how inflation is affecting consumer spending. About half of adults in the U.S. say they find themselves taking note of higher prices “all the time” these days, and many are already making adjustments to their spending habits as a result. Even more worrisome: more than eight in 10 adults think the U.S. economy is likely to experience a recession this year. 

Read more of CNBC’s coverage here or watch a clip from their broadcast here. 

On Tuesday, we published new polling exclusively with Axios, timed to their inaugural What’s Next summit, which brought together experts from the worlds of technology, businesss, and policy to discuss the future of work, life, and more. Some key highlights:

• Most people (60%) say they’re unfamiliar with the “metaverse.” Among those who are familiar with it, about half (50%) say they’re neither scared nor excited about it, while 35% are more scared and 14% are more excited. 

• The overwhelming majority (75%) of adults in the U.S. say they or someone in their family interacts with a voice-activated assistant. Most say they interact with a voice-activated assistant on either a smartphone (61%), smart speaker (35%), in a car (29%), on a computer (14%) or another device (7%).

• Young adults dominate cryptocurrency ownership: 27% of adults ages 18-34 say they own crypto vs. 15% of those 35-64 and just 5% of those 65+.

Read Axios’ What’s Next newsletter for the complete story, or check out the findings at our blog post. 

Finally, we wanted to include one quick update to our newsletter from last month, when when started tracking Americans’ views on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. We have been tracking public opinion on the war in Ukraine since late January, when Russia began amassing troops at the border. More than two months later, our polling finds that the war is still capturing the attention of a large majority of Americans: 73% this past week say they are still following the conflict in Ukraine very or somewhat closely. Look for more updates from us on this topic in the weeks to come.

That’s all for this week! Thanks as always for reading.