A recent horror story of a financial advice columnist getting scammed out of $50,000 is a reminder that anyone can fall victim to scams.
While you would think younger generations raised on the internet would be more savvy when it comes to online scams, it turns out that Gen Z reports higher rates of identity theft, romance scams, cyberbullying, and phishing scams. That’s according to a survey from Deloitte. They are also more likely to have their social media account hacked or location data misused.
There are some theories about why this is happening. Gen Z – people born between 1995 and 2012 – are the first digital natives born into a world connected by the internet. That means they are comfortable online, so it makes sense they would run into more online scams than people who are not as connected. And since they are more comfortable online they are more comfortable engaging with strangers online, leaving them more vulnerable to scams.
The other issue may be education. While Gen X and Millennials were warned about the dangers of the internet when it was brand new, those warnings dropped off. This means Gen Z is more trusting of what they see online. A Pew Research report found that adults under thirty were almost as likely to trust the information they see on social media as information from national media outlets.