The generation that grew up with the internet isn’t invulnerable to becoming the victim of online hackers and scammers.

Hm, like most opinion pieces, there aren’t any hard numbers from studies really shown besides the initial percentages. And I immediately picked up on the second paragraph’s

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

Yeah no shit those metrics will skew towards Gen Z being more victimized if you’re lumping cyberbullying into the mix! They’re one of the first generations that have had to deal with their peers harassing the everloving shit out of them all hours of the day online. As a millennial, I didn’t have to even think about putting up with that until at least high school. I’d really want to see what questionnaire wording they were using for the survey data. If the question was legitimately “Have you ever been a victim of phishing, identity theft, romance scams, or cyberbullying?” then I think almost everyone with a social media account for their whole life would need to check “yes.”

Self reporting is also notoriously unreliable

Pigeon
link
fedilink
21Y

I also wonder if they controlled for the fact younger people are online more often in the first place.

@Reil@beehaw.org
link
fedilink
English
181Y

Yeah no shit those metrics will skew towards Gen Z being more victimized if you’re lumping cyberbullying into the mix!

They’re high in each of those categories individually, not (just) if you add the categories together and compare the totals. Millennials are slightly higher in Romance scams and identify theft though.

BUT these numbers are also self-disclosed. I’m not sure how you’d correct for this in a survey, but I could easily believe that these two generations are simply more likely to realize they’ve been victimized, and have a higher exposure to the internet (and thus to scams).

I’d be more interested in something like a sit-down test, to be honest. It’d be easier to account for time spent online and self-awareness of victimization, and more likely to isolate “internet street smarts”, as far as I can tell.

Also worth considering with self-report that Gen Z may just be more open about their failings

ArtZuron
link
fedilink
English
91Y

Considering what the boomers and Gen x have put the millennials through, I’m not surprised they’re susceptible to romance scams.

We just want to be loved.

Create a post

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community’s icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

  • 1 user online
  • 144 users / day
  • 275 users / week
  • 709 users / month
  • 2.87K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 3.09K Posts
  • 64.9K Comments
  • Modlog