GET ready for a new face in your Instagram feed: Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.

The Fed announced on Monday (Oct 2) that it would join Instagram and Threads, bolstering its social-media presence to seven platforms.

“Hi, I’m Jay Powell, I’m the chair of the Federal Reserve,” the central bank chief says in the Fed’s first Instagram post, a reel where he notes that October is National Economic Education Month.

The Fed said in a statement that it launched the new accounts in the hopes of increasing accessibility and the availability of news and educational content. The typically buttoned-up institution has broadened its reach to the masses in recent years – it started giving regular press conferences about a decade ago and launched a series of community listening events in 2019.

Some of Fed’s 12 reserve banks, which are semi-independent from the board in Washington, have made forays onto platforms like Instagram. During the pandemic, San Francisco Fed president Mary Daly hosted an Instagram Live with college students, offering advice about looking for jobs amid widespread lockdowns.

The New York Fed started an Instagram account last month, where it will provide information on what it’s like to work at the institution, people behind its work, and different pathways to becoming an economist.

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The Fed said posts on Instagram – a largely visual platform known for everything from cooking videos to personal-finance tips – will include educational content, frequently asked questions and other photos and videos. The account on Threads, an X-like application owned by Instagram, will largely reflect what it posts to X, which was formerly known as Twitter. Its handle is @federalreserveboard on both platforms.

Part of the Fed’s mission is financial and economic education. In 2021, the Cleveland Fed, home to the Center for Inflation Research, put out a series of videos that utilised Lego to explain how the central bank works to keep inflation low.

Besides X, the Fed is also on Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn. It has yet to join TikTok. BLOOMBERG