Millennials More Likely To Fall For Scams Than Baby Boomers (washingtonexaminer.com)

A new report from the Better Business Bureau suggests that millennials are now more likely to fall victim to a scam than Baby Boomers. Washington Examiner reports: The Better Business Bureau reports that 69 percent of scam victims are under the age of 45. Young adults heading off to college are especially gullible, the group says. "College students can be easy targets for scammers and identity thieves. They are old enough to have money, young enough to be vulnerable and are likely unsupervised as many are away from home for the first time," writes Heather Massey of the Better Business Bureau. Phishing scams now target cell phones as well as email and social media.

"Millennials spend a lot of time on Facebook or other social media sites, where they can target them with these messages," said Jim Hegarty, Better Business Bureau president and CEO. College students also use sensitive information frequently, like student IDs, Social Security numbers, and banking information.

Comments

Comes from over-protective parents and society

[gweihir]

Protect children and teenagers (no, teenagers are _not_ children anymore) too much, and when they are finally exposed to reality unfiltered, they are unprepared. The whole thing seems to be the result of a demented "cult of the child", where everybody under 18 years old is viewed as a child that is under threat from all sides all the time and needs to be protected to the highest level possible. Boomers and older people did not have that. They were allowed to walk to school or ride their bike there as soon as competent and able. They played outside, visited neighbors and friends that lived more distant and went shopping on their own as children. On the way, they picked up the skills needed to evaluate mild and more serious threats (traffic) and learned that a critical eye is needed when interacting with the world.

In short: Infantilization and over-protectiveness harms children and teenagers and that harm will mostly manifest when they are finally regarded as not-children.