Conventional wisdom dictates that people that have only recently started to adopt a particular type of technology would be far more likely to fall prey to scams related to that technology than might have been the case otherwise. In spite of the fact that this is the case, there is no age limit to getting scammed online, with members of Gen Z turning out to be surprisingly easy to trick by scam artists trying to pull the wool over their eyes.
According to a recent survey conducted by Deloitte, Americans that belonged to gen Z, which is to say people born between the 1990s and the 2010s, had triple the likelihood of getting scammed as baby boomers. A report on catfishing scams also revealed that people under the age of 20 lost a whopping $210 million in 2022 alone through various scams. This is several times more than the $8.2 million that was reported in 2017 with all things having been considered and taken into account.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Gen Z is also the most online generation of all. Using the internet more can lead to more scams because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up connecting you with a larger quantity of malicious actors.
Baby Boomers, on the other hand, don’t really tend to use the internet with all that high of a degree of frequency. Gen Z will do much of their shopping online, whereas Baby Boomers might prefer to just go to the store instead. Furthermore, many of these scams occur on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
This puts Gen Z directly in the line of fire, and many of them are still too young to be able to tell the difference between a genuine offer and one that seems too good to be true. More effort needs to be put into educating Gen Z so that they can keep themselves safe from all kinds of harm.
Chart: CybSafe
Read next: The Battle of the Social Titans X vs. Threads - By the Numbers
According to a recent survey conducted by Deloitte, Americans that belonged to gen Z, which is to say people born between the 1990s and the 2010s, had triple the likelihood of getting scammed as baby boomers. A report on catfishing scams also revealed that people under the age of 20 lost a whopping $210 million in 2022 alone through various scams. This is several times more than the $8.2 million that was reported in 2017 with all things having been considered and taken into account.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Gen Z is also the most online generation of all. Using the internet more can lead to more scams because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up connecting you with a larger quantity of malicious actors.
Baby Boomers, on the other hand, don’t really tend to use the internet with all that high of a degree of frequency. Gen Z will do much of their shopping online, whereas Baby Boomers might prefer to just go to the store instead. Furthermore, many of these scams occur on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
This puts Gen Z directly in the line of fire, and many of them are still too young to be able to tell the difference between a genuine offer and one that seems too good to be true. More effort needs to be put into educating Gen Z so that they can keep themselves safe from all kinds of harm.
Chart: CybSafe
Read next: The Battle of the Social Titans X vs. Threads - By the Numbers
