Teens falling prey to online scams faster than seniors

Teens are sometimes easy targets for con artists because they are social and eager to make new connections, and they enjoy a public platform, McClellan said. — Dreamstime/TNS

Teenagers are super tech-savvy. Having been born and raised in the era of smartphone ubiquity and social media pervasiveness, they have an expansive digital network, can navigate the web with ease, are app-smart and speak in text code, as foreign a language to most older folks as French.

Turns out, those tech-shrewd teens are also easy targets. Teenagers and young adults – those who are considered “Gen Z” – are also falling for online scams at a higher rate than seniors, according to a new study conducted by SocialCatfish.com, a California-based social media investigation service.