Anyone can get scammed online, including the generation of Americans that grew up with the internet.

If you’re part of Generation Z — that is, born sometime between the late 1990s and early 2010s — you or one of your friends may have been the target or victim of an online scam. In fact, according to a recent Deloitte survey, members of Gen Z fall for these scams and get hacked far more frequently than their grandparents do.

Compared to older generations, younger generations have reported higher rates of victimization in phishing, identity theft, romance scams, and cyberbullying. The Deloitte survey shows that Gen Z Americans were three times more likely to get caught up in an online scam than boomers were (16 percent and 5 percent, respectively). Compared to boomers, Gen Z was also twice as likely to have a social media account hacked (17 percent and 8 percent). Fourteen percent of Gen Z-ers surveyed said they’d had their location information misused, more than any other generation. 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.

  • Drigo@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    My little brother got scammed in TF2, I think he was around 12-13 years (not 100% sure). And he was promised crazy expensive skins and weapons, and they ofcource wanted to do it in 2 trades. When you’re that age, you’re so naive, you don’t really know about scams like that.

    I guess he learned a very important lesson that day haha

      • Drigo@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Oh it happened like 5-7 years ago. Yeah, kids is unfortunately a prime target in games, because they don’t know any better.

        As long as their is money to be made, assholes is going to abuse it.