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.::undefined
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…
True. As a kid I’d fall for scams all the time, constantly downloading malware that would crash the family computer.
No way it went up 20x in 5yrs? There must be something weird with the data
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.
You mean kids don’t have enough life experience to spot scams at first glance? No way!
I’m surprised. Just like that time I was the 1,000,000th visitor of this well reputable website back in the day.
They can’t use computers! Sorry to generalise, but I was called a genius for using the task manager and just basic Word formatting. The thing is, we do have our 10,000 hours, maybe I am the equivalent of a chess grandmaster in Word. It’s just jarring to hear from a university student.
As a gen z, I agree-- I once used a terminal in front of one of my friends and he (unironically) asked if I was programming it myself.
From what I can see, it’s because “screens” got so much easier to use there’s been no need for countless nights of screaming at the laptop until you figure something out. I mean, it was not easy becoming fluent.
I am scared to see what will happen when iPad kids grow up and something doesn’t work, their understanding of an app is an icon with a label that you click so it opens. No troubleshooting skills whatsoever, even googling a problem isn’t an option for them.
I mean, there was that one time that I tried alpine linux w/sway and then spent ~30 minutes connecting to my friends wifi (this was when he asked if I was programming it myself).
Right, Linux printer drivers. I am the only person on the internet that solved the issue, as far as I can tell.
Same here, I have the nickname “hacker” at school just because I use and android and am tech savy. I have seen people that didn’t know what a folder was, thx apple and thought I was hacking the school or smth when I updated some stuff in termux.
Same here, I have the nickname “hacker” at school just because I use an android and am somewhat tech savy. I have seen people that didn’t know what a folder was, thx apple, and thought I was hacking smth when doing an update in Artix…
I think that generalization is acceptable.
Most avoid computers. My parents use’em and click everything they come across with. Decade ago I installed Linux in their shitty old computer, just so I can remove everything they can use to screw up the OS.
Everything was fine for few years till my father bought a new shitty low end computer from the black friday with all kinds of support and additional warranty BS that needed Windows with VNC that they really didn’t understand.
So, the result of that study is BS. One reason is that people selling old people expensive shit they don’t need is not considered a scam.
Boomer mother using Samsung flagship device to use WhatsApp and literally nothing else? That contract is absolutely a scam.
80yo grandma with a ultrafast 5G data plan bigger than mine. And her daily phone is a Doro that doesn’t even do text messages.
Late Gen X to early Millennial was the sweet spot between needing to know how a computer works and having a computer that just works. People before and after don’t have that experience.
Gen Z is also less tech savvy even though they’ve only known devices and screens since they were born so this isn’t surprising.
Even though? I don’t think it’s a correct assumption that “devices” would or should make you tech savvy. Smartphones and tablets makes you less tech savvy I’d say. Proper desktop OS computers is where it’s at.
It doesn’t matter if it’s smartphone or desktop it’s the not quite working part is what got millennials tinkering and understanding technology
Fuck desktop OS computers. You can be completely tech illiterate if you use MacOS and Windows only. Hell, even a lot of modern Linux distros are basically “Linux with training wheels.” You want to get really tech literate? Do what I did and use nothing but vanilla Arch for around 3 years, constantly installing new things that broke my install and having to fix it or just reinstall at least once every two months. The greatest teacher isn’t necessity. It’s frustration. The second greatest is the arch linux wiki.
I literally can’t tell if this is supposed to be a serious comment or a shitpost copypasta.
Little bit of both.
Boomers fall for online scams because they aren’t aware of how powerful the internet can make bad actors.
Zoomers fall for online scams because they’re younger and simply inexperienced dealing with scam artists.
Millennials fall for online scams because we’re lonely and really want the friendly Indian guy we’re talking to to get their itunes gift card.
I feel like the scams are just more intracate nowadays.
Well yeah, there’s a lot more of them on the internet.
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.
I means if we’re talking about things like ordering from wish/temu (which I absolutely would) then yeah I can totally see this.
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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.
