this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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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.

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[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 134 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kids these days cant tell which download button is the real one

[–] 1boiledpotato@sh.itjust.works 45 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's why you a need a package manager

[–] 768@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A package manager for piracy?

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.ml 34 points 1 year ago (14 children)

Yes, it's called torrenting software. If you are just downloading regular things using a "download" button, that's amateur piracy.

[–] edgemaster72@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

You gotta raise those sails up, that's rookie piracy

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[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 91 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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).

Does this control for the fact that Gen Z are simply online a lot more than Boomers?

I can’t tell what these are percentages of. 16% of scammed people were GenZ? 16% of GenZ have experienced a scam? Because both of those would be skewed if, for example, 100% of GenZ use the internet daily and 20% of Boomers have never used it.

Once again, a journalist doesn’t know how to present statistics in a meaningful way. They do this 72%!

[–] TheWoozy@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think it has more to do with age and experience than generational labels. Kis who "were just born yesterday" or "are still wet behind the ears" have always been, and always will be gullible. Everyone needs to be fooled a few times before they "wise up". We need to stop all generational finger pointing and bigotry.

[–] IDontHavePantsOn@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

My kid and his friends were convinced they would get $100 of free stuff from Temu, but only if they got 10 people to download the app. I tried telling them it was bullshit marketing but since they "heard so and so got $100 then it will work.". I downloaded it just to get them to shut up and deleted it.

Temu. Fucking Temu? It's the dollar store wish.com and that's saying something.

Anyways, it obviously didn't work and haven't heard about Temu since, then I'm pretty sure they realize their mistake.

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[–] ohlaph@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's a terribly written article.

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Its awfulness is at least 81%

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[–] BetaDoggo_@lemmy.world 85 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Breaking news: children are more gullible than adults.

[–] Jimbo@yiffit.net 43 points 1 year ago (10 children)
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[–] Redredme@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

"children".

"Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1990s as starting birth years and the early 2010s as ending birth years"

(source wikithingy)

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[–] max@feddit.nl 64 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Doesn’t surprise me, really. With all the stories you hear about the younger part of GenZ not being familiar with things like files and directories because everything is just saved in this enormous bucket of things called “the cloud”. I’m sure some of the things I’ve read are ragebait, but from my own experience, the increased usability of mobile operating systems has really influenced their ability to work with “traditional” stuff, which is nothing more than logical. But yeah.

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[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 43 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Compared to older generations, younger generations have reported higher rates of victimization in phishing, identity theft, romance scams, and cyberbullying.

Why include cyber bullying?

[–] Steve@communick.news 47 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yah, that really seems out of place with the rest of the list. How does one "fall for" cyberbullying? Where's the scam?

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[–] Asudox@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I was interested in computers since like I am 6 so I am not one of those type of GenZ teenagers that only know how to use social media platforms like Instagram. Not all GenZ are like them.

[–] VicentAdultman@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah. But ngl, my family is pretty big and between my 6 cousins, I am the only one that tries to understand computer and how things work. They just use internet for gaming and social media, don't even care to see why their wifi is slow and just blame the ISP. Fixing is my only utility to my family, but I'll take it.

[–] Sethayy@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yeah no shit I'm surprised even 8% of boomers are online, they're using the only perfect antivirus - abstinence

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 year ago

That and a lot of stuff is no longer email scams. They have moved on to platforms like Discord that would be rare for a boomer to use. Even viruses are hardly an issue for them because everything is mostly done on mobile now. I know zero boomers who would say I am going to install this random .apk for a cool app that was suggested to me... instead it would just be "the app you recommend doesn't exist, it's not in the Play/Apple store"

It's this weird Era where you almost need a little more technological literacy to be scammed, but not enough to actually recognize a scam.

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[–] ieightpi@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Maybe it's just a wisdom kind of thing? Gen Z is still young and learning the ropes of adult life. Boomers have more years on them to learn what is or isn't a scam.

[–] deft@ttrpg.network 32 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I don't think so. I heard Millennials are the best with this stuff making us the outlier because we grew up in an age of constant tech advancement and during a time when a lot of things weren't totally consumer friendly yet so we had to problem solve tech a lot.

Pirating played a big role in this with limewire and stuff but so did Xanga, Myspace and Tumblr having you learn basic coding to make shit cool.

The article could rather flip and say Millennials don't fall for scams like everyone else does. They grew up with the Internet but we pioneered it.

[–] ohlaph@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Exactly. I'm a millennial and had to troubleshoot a lot for my boomer parents and gen x siblings.

Although I work in tech now, I didn't until my third career.

[–] ieightpi@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

i like this take. especially since im a millennial haha

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[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 14 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


“People that are digital natives for the most part, they’re aware of these things,” says Scott Debb, an associate professor of psychology at Norfolk State University who has studied the cybersecurity habits of younger Americans.

In one 2020 study published in the International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence and Cybercrime, Debb and a team of researchers compared the self-reported online safety behaviors of millennials and Gen Z, the two “digitally native” generations.

But because Gen Z relies on technology more often, on more devices, and in more aspects of their lives, there might just be more opportunities for them to encounter a bogus email or unreliable shop, says Tanneasha Gordon, a principal at Deloitte who leads the company’s data & digital trust business.

Staying safer online could involve switching browsers, enabling different settings in the apps you use, or changing how you store passwords, she noted.

Gordon floated the idea of major social media platforms sending out test phishing emails — the kind that you might get from your employer, as a tool to check your own vulnerabilities — which lead users who fall for the trap toward some educational resources.

But really, Guru says, the key to getting Gen Z better prepared for a world full of online scams might be found in helping younger people understand the systems that incentivize them to exist in the first place.


The original article contains 1,313 words, the summary contains 228 words. Saved 83%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] Atomic@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Bad article that makes it difficult to find the study they're citing.

However. It would not surprise me if true. I'm sorry but so many of you GenZ are the most gullible people I've even seen.

Maybe we millenials are good at not being scammed because we grew up during the infancy of the internet. Our mistakes were not punished as severely. There was no widespread PayPal, cashapp, venmo or stuff like that. At worst we'd lose items in WoW that wouldnt matter in 6 months anyway because the new expanaion would come. These days a kid will lose his knife in CSGO somehow valued at $600.

Still makes me sad to see that MLM scams are thriving within all generations. Just heartbreaking.

[–] mascarasnake@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Generation X forgotten once again. Whatever.

(It was kind of expected at the time that the Millennials would be named Generation Y because they followed us, but that name never took hold. So they skipped Y and went straight on to Z, then continued with A.)

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[–] 01011@monero.town 12 points 1 year ago

For all the older folk pointing fingers: "But because Gen Z relies on technology more often, on more devices, and in more aspects of their lives, there might just be more opportunities for them to encounter a bogus email or unreliable shop"

[–] casmael@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] casmael@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Holy shit this needs additional jpeg

[–] JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is actually quite funny. The most connected generation ever. Lol

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[–] HaggierRapscallier@feddit.nl 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If this story is even true, I suspect it's because partly because fake sites are very convincing and easy to make - social media is out control for scam ads too, especially instagram anecdotally (I stopped somebody getting scammed).

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