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.

  • ilikenoodlez@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I think it’s just a certain type of person the non tech savvy type that are prone to getting scammed. Gen Z’s life is more internet/tech focused than the boomers so there’s more of them to scam.

    • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Correct answer, even if boomers did use computers some, they are aging out of using them.

      My dad completely stopped years ago. My mom literally just checks email from me and my sister. And it’s losing the ability to do that.

      Telephone scams on the other hand…