Millennials are probably the best at avoiding scams.

Unfortunately we also have no money to scam anyway.

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...

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

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.

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.

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.

They never played Runescape and it shows

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.

Exposure to technology does not automatically breed expertise. I have a 15 year old. Smart phones have existed for her entire life. She knows how to use Snapchat and take goofy selfies. That's where her expertise ends. Any time anything is wrong, she sounds like her grandma complaining "mY mOdEm DoEsNt WoRk!" It's not a modem grandma! That's your computer! Most of her friends are the same way.

When you grow up around something being easy to use, you lose the intricate understanding that used to be necessary.

For Gen X and Millennials, it's probably cars and/or electronics.

Busted light switch cover? Better call an electrician "just in case".

Need to replace an air filter? Better take it to the shop.

Not sure where the line is, but I had a Gen X woman tell me that she needs to take the car to the dealership to get her air pressure adjusted. When I showed her how to take off the cap on the tire's air pressure valve, she looked at me as if I had just pried off her steering wheel, lol

Not sure where the line is drawn, and there are definitely some people in those generations who know those things. But I'd bet Boomers and earlier generations had a better understanding on average.

They are also falling for right wing trolls wrapped thinly in progressive language

wish i could say i’m surprised. i’m gen z myself and i’d say i’m pretty decent with not being an idiot with technology. i do the usual stuff like running firefox + uBlockOrigin and i’m also a linux user. anyways, people at my school are just… so dumb with technology. a bunch of people have lost permission to use their school chromebooks and a computer at school because they got malware on it. either by going to a pirate site or just clicking a random download button (my school doesn’t allow us to use adblockers). not to mention that most of them believe that macs cannot get malware. so yeah, i’m unfortunately not surprised with this

King of obvious really by the sheer volume of manosphere, crypto, etc grift content out there.

If there's one thing I've noticed about Gen Z purely from interacting with them online it's that they're incredibly, remarkably gullible. Like, broadly resistant to the concept of facetiousness, sarcasm, or that they might be being taken for a ride. They take everything at face value. I once made the joke on reddit that the greatest Disney villain of all time was Cobra Bubbles from Lilo and Stitch because his backstory was that he used to work for the CIA before becoming a social worker, which meant there was a non-zero percent chance he helped train Osama Bin Laden in insurgency tactics in the 1980s and was therefore indirectly responsible for 9/11. The zoomers were both confused and outraged because they believed me entirely at face value. I would imagine them applying a similar degree of online literacy to your average dark pattern scam that said "click here for free V Bucks." There are no V Bucks, dog. There's never any V Bucks.

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

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 disagree partially with this article. While not every gen z tech consumer is a Linux user. Not all of them fall for scams. It's rather, the people who are so invested in certain franchise like Fortnight, and trying to get free robux or vbucks. Or trying to get free gift cards to get free curency to buy games on console storefronts. There a some that are gen z the do exersize common sense. Being a gen z myself, I would say I am one of those that do exersize common sense guarding form scams.

Well yeah, there's a lot more of them on the internet.

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

So... based on this headline... studies from the NFT craze a year and a half ago are finally coming out.