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Young Adults Still Prone to Falling for Internet Scams

By Laura Tucker
Young Adults Internet Scams Featured

It’s easy to see how the older generations are prone to falling for Internet scams, but it’s not as easy to see how the younger generation can easily fall as well. Nevertheless, according to new data, there was a huge increase in the money young people lost in the last five years.

Read on to learn how kids get around parental controls to do whatever they want.

Money Lost to Internet Scams via Age Group

Regardless of the increase, there is still far less money lost to Internet scams by people under 20 than any other age group. Yet, there was still a 1125.92 percent increase in the money lost from 2017 to 2021.

I was just discussing how different young adults are when using tech yesterday. A friend and I were talking about how quickly our young adult children can send off a text. Their fingers just fly over the onboard keyboards. Despite being a fast touch typist, I labor over typing on my phone with a hunt-and-peck method.

Young Adults Internet Scams Girl
Image source: Unsplash

It’s easy to see the difference: they grew up with technology, and typing on a tiny keyboard is second nature to them. My adult children grew up with computers in the home and each had their own phones by the ages of 11 and 13.

But despite living with technology and growing up with it, young people under 20 lost $101.4 million to Internet scams in 2021, a dramatic increase over the $8.2 million they lost in 2017.

People from the ages of 20 on up lost millions and even billions overall in their age group, but no demographic had as large of an increase as the 20 and under group.

The 20-29 age group lost $431.1 million, a 534 percent increase. 30-39 lost $937.3 million, a 499% percent increase. 40-49 lost $1.19 billion, a 386 percent increase. 50-59 lost $1.26 billion, a 357 percent increase. 60+ lost $1.68 billion, a 390 percent increase.

Young Adults Internet Scams Teen
Image source: Unsplash

I have to say, though, that I do see it to be a little unfair to separate everyone by decades but lump everyone 60 and over together – and it’s not because I’m only two years away from being in that group. That’s lumping my 62-year-old sister with my 86-year-old father with dementia.

Social Catfish believes some of the fault of the under 20 group’s vulnerability lies with parenting. A poll discovered that 54 percent of U.S. households do not monitor their children’s online activities. Assuming those parents are in the age groups of 20 to 59, that is surprising. Yet, it still seems there may be something else to this trend.

More Statistics on Internet Scams

There were plenty of other alarming Internet scam statistics released by Social Catfish, with its data coming from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center and the Federal Trade Commission.

There was $6.9 billion lost in the U.S. to Internet scams over only $3.5 billion two years prior. That’s nearly double. While it is blamed for everything in the past few years, you have to wonder if the blame here can be placed on the pandemic.

Young Adults Internet Scams Woman
Image source: Unsplash

What isn’t surprising is that Florida, a state known to have many retirees, lost a larger average in scams at $33,338 than any other U.S. state. Fascinatingly, the next state to lose the most money on average is North Dakota at $31,711, though it only had 671 victims compared to the 15,855 in Florida. The state with the most victims was California, with 67,095, yet only an average of $18,302 was lost.

Other interesting statistics center around romance scams on the Internet. Social Catfish worked with a former Nigerian romance scammer who now works for the other side. He provided his insights for the study.

Three-quarters of the romance scam victims were college educated. 13 percent earned graduate degrees. $547 million was lost to these scams in the last calendar year. Financial situations made a difference, though, as 84 percent of the victims were from middle- or lower-class households. Forty percent made less than $40,000/year. Thirty-five percent of the victims were retired, and some had to start working again to recoup the loss.

Young Adults Internet Scams Man
Image source: Unsplash

Social Catfish suggests that to avoid Internet scams, you should:

  • Not give out money or personal information
  • Look up sources on the Internet
  • Use a password manager
  • Read the romance scammer training manual that was provided by the scammer
  • Beware of five red flags: poor grammar, reluctance to video chat, claiming to work in the military or overseas, and requesting gift cards or cryptocurrency.

If you believe you were scammed, check out these four things to do if you are scammed.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Laura Tucker Avatar
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

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