Gen Z falls for online scams more than their boomer grandparents do. The generation that grew up with the internet isn’t invulnerable to becoming the victim of online hackers and scammers.

ikidd , 5 months ago

I think they're way more used to just giving information away without thinking about it. "They have everything already, why fight it" just plays into the hands of scammers.

werefreeatlast , 5 months ago

But these are sophisticated scams where the scammer sounds exactly like Uncle John and he wants you to help him out with some chips and a Costco gift card for Amazon. That's pretty normal because your uncle doesn't like going to the mall.

It's not like the boomers sending all their money because a prince is going to invest it in recovery his kingdumb or something like that and then pay it back tenfold.

originalucifer , 5 months ago

genX are the perps. shhhh dont tell anyone. no one knows were here

rdyoung , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

This is also why we are more likely to notice it. Some of us could teach the scanners a thing or two.

Asidonhopo , 5 months ago

Yeah I'd say growing up coding in Basic on DOS machines, and logging onto BBSes gives us a leg up over millenials who at best started with AOL and Windows 98

cmgvd3lw , 5 months ago

Why do we have names for generations? Stupid.

Nachorella , 5 months ago

Yeah, it's become the new sports teams. Everyone loves blaming their problems on whatever generation they least identify with, when realistically there's no fair way to judge an entire generation and no fair way to compare groups with such large age gaps and wildly different experiences growing up.

twack , 5 months ago

Because "the youngest cohort falls for online scams more than the oldest cohort" means the same thing but communicates far less information.

Brekky , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

I means if we're talking about things like ordering from wish/temu (which I absolutely would) then yeah I can totally see this.

givesomefucks , 5 months ago

The cost of falling for those scams may also be surging for younger people: Social Catfish’s 2023 report on online scams found that online scam victims under 20 years old lost an estimated $8.2 million in 2017. In 2022, they lost $210 million.

Teenagers are bad at risk assessment...

This shouldn't shock anyone, but it makes boomers feel good about themselves and their lead addled brains can't handle the critical thinking to understand why this isn't the win they think it's is...

pavnilschanda , 5 months ago

True. As a kid I'd fall for scams all the time, constantly downloading malware that would crash the family computer.

lledrtx , 5 months ago

No way it went up 20x in 5yrs? There must be something weird with the data

givesomefucks , 5 months ago

Time online would naturally increase, but more importantly the pandemic would exacerbate that while also increasing the amount of people resorting to scamming.

There's multiple parts to the equation, called confounding variables.

EmergMemeHologram , 5 months ago

Honestly a lot actually has changed in that time.

So much info has leaked that it's a lot easier to phish users than ever. There are dumps of usernames and passwords, so you can know several websites they use as starting points for fraud.

Password reuse and credentials stuffing are also common now, which means if teens reuse passwords you can get into manu of their accounts.

Caligvla , 5 months ago

You mean kids don't have enough life experience to spot scams at first glance? No way!

eager_eagle , 5 months ago

I'm surprised. Just like that time I was the 1,000,000th visitor of this well reputable website back in the day.

Nommer , 5 months ago

And people have unirinically said that zoomers don't need to learn computers and tech because advancements in UI have made that obsolete.

AngryishHumanoid , 5 months ago

Gen Z are 11 to 26, younger when this study was done. Take out the youngest cohort of Gen Z and the oldest cohort of Boomers, then show me the new statistics. This is how you mislead with data.

autotldr Bot , 5 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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“People that are digital natives for the most part, they’re aware of these things,” says Scott Debb, an associate professor of psychology at Norfolk State University who has studied the cybersecurity habits of younger Americans.

In one 2020 study published in the International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence and Cybercrime, Debb and a team of researchers compared the self-reported online safety behaviors of millennials and Gen Z, the two “digitally native” generations.

But because Gen Z relies on technology more often, on more devices, and in more aspects of their lives, there might just be more opportunities for them to encounter a bogus email or unreliable shop, says Tanneasha Gordon, a principal at Deloitte who leads the company’s data & digital trust business.

Staying safer online could involve switching browsers, enabling different settings in the apps you use, or changing how you store passwords, she noted.

Gordon floated the idea of major social media platforms sending out test phishing emails — the kind that you might get from your employer, as a tool to check your own vulnerabilities — which lead users who fall for the trap toward some educational resources.

But really, Guru says, the key to getting Gen Z better prepared for a world full of online scams might be found in helping younger people understand the systems that incentivize them to exist in the first place.

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