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.::undefined
Exposure to technology does not automatically breed expertise. I have a 15 year old. Smart phones have existed for her entire life. She knows how to use Snapchat and take goofy selfies. That’s where her expertise ends. Any time anything is wrong, she sounds like her grandma complaining “mY mOdEm DoEsNt WoRk!” It’s not a modem grandma! That’s your computer! Most of her friends are the same way.
And “WiFi” is synonymous for “Interenet connection” to them.
Yea, kiddo, the WiFi is working just fine, but the ISP crapped its pants and you can’t connect to anything past this house.
My partner is a millennial who grew up with computers, but never got too technical with them. She was confused when I told her that our WiFi was down at the router, but we still had an internet connection.
“If we have internet, why can’t I connect?”
Because the WiFi isn’t working.
“But you said we still have an internet connection.”
Well, I do, and so would you if you’d let me run an ethernet cable to your office, too!"
“…but if there’s no WiFi, why does the cable work?”
Lol
Not to mention most ISP marketing is pretty loose in its terminology. Most if not all radio or tv ads these days seem to interchange internet and wifi as if they are one and the same on a daily basis.
ie. All ads stating something along the lines of “subscribe to whole home wifi for a low monthly fee.”
I have too many conversations on both sides of the age gap trying to explain the difference between supplying your own router with its own wifi capabilities as opposed to a ISP modem/router combo.
I’ve had this conversation so many times with my partner. She’s on an older laptop in a room that’s directly through a pretty thick wall from the router, but its still a short distance to bring an Ethernet over, and she’s always using her laptop only at her desk there anyway.
She’s always yelling at me (who have my desk right next to the router, and everything I use has Ethernet ) that the internet is down again and that she really needs it right now, because work.
But no, getting angry at me that I should do something about it is fine, but that something apparently shouldn’t mean the most feasible solution.
I’m not dealing with a WiFi extender for a spot that’s literally like 8 meters from the router, for her 100mbs WiFi card.
But it’s her loss, at least I have the remaining 900mbps for myself from our plan…
Here, you can plug this into your laptop whenever the WiFi goes down and you need internet RIGHT AWAY. If you don’t need it urgently, then you don’t have to plug it in.
“But wires are ugly!”
Not if you keep them organized!
“No, they’re just ugly! Just fix the wifi so this doesn’t happen anymore!”
…yes dear
They can’t use computers! Sorry to generalise, but I was called a genius for using the task manager and just basic Word formatting. The thing is, we do have our 10,000 hours, maybe I am the equivalent of a chess grandmaster in Word. It’s just jarring to hear from a university student.
Late Gen X to early Millennial was the sweet spot between needing to know how a computer works and having a computer that just works. People before and after don’t have that experience.
When you grow up around something being easy to use, you lose the intricate understanding that used to be necessary.
For Gen X and Millennials, it’s probably cars and/or electronics.
Busted light switch cover? Better call an electrician “just in case”.
Need to replace an air filter? Better take it to the shop.
Not sure where the line is, but I had a Gen X woman tell me that she needs to take the car to the dealership to get her air pressure adjusted. When I showed her how to take off the cap on the tire’s air pressure valve, she looked at me as if I had just pried off her steering wheel, lol
Not sure where the line is drawn, and there are definitely some people in those generations who know those things. But I’d bet Boomers and earlier generations had a better understanding on average.
To be fair, cars are becoming less and less serviceable.
I had a light bulb that died on my car, and tried to change it myself. How hard could that be?
Turns out the light bulb is so buried under the engine I ended up giving up and bringing it to the shop. And often even independent shops can no longer service cars, you have to bring it to your maker’s dealership because only they have the proprietary tooling to fix it.
That feels like it should be illegal.
As a car enthusiast and backyard mechanic, this is precisely why I prefer to own older vehicles. If something goes wrong with my '06, I can handle that. My friends/family members with newer cars, by and large, can’t even handle their own basic maintenance because of the way things are designed now. It’s worse than planned obsolescence, it’s engineered difficulty.
I tried to replace my sister’s serpentine belt a couple summers ago. Simple, basic maintenance, right? Turns out, the only way to turn the tensioner, was from underneath the car. I’m still mad about it.
Millennials are probably the best at avoiding scams.
Unfortunately we also have no money to scam anyway.
It’s because of all that avocado toast.
Plot twist: avocado toast is the scam.
Mmmmm scam
More scam, please
The cost of falling for those scams may also be surging for younger people: Social Catfish’s 2023 report on online scams found that online scam victims under 20 years old lost an estimated $8.2 million in 2017. In 2022, they lost $210 million.
Teenagers are bad at risk assessment…
This shouldn’t shock anyone, but it makes boomers feel good about themselves and their lead addled brains can’t handle the critical thinking to understand why this isn’t the win they think it’s is…
No way it went up 20x in 5yrs? There must be something weird with the data
You mean kids don’t have enough life experience to spot scams at first glance? No way!
