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The money lost by teens grew by 1125% over the last five years compared to 390% for seniors. Teens lost just $8.2 million in 2017 compared to $101.4 million last year. This speaks to the growing sophistication of scammers and the overconfidence of tech-savvy teens online.

Social Catfish released a study on the State of Internet Scams 2022 after analyzing data from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center and the FTC released in 2022.
A record $6.9 billion was lost to online scams in 2021, up nearly double from $3.5 billion in 2019.
California ranked No. 1 with 67,095 victims losing $1,227,989,139 last year, an average loss of $18,302.

3 Online Scams Targeting Teens This Holiday Season:

1) Romance Scams: During the holidays, teenagers who feel lonely — despite being surrounded by family — turn online looking for connection. Romance scammers approach them with stolen photos of an attractive suitor, shower them with love and affection, and begin asking for money.
How to Avoid: Perform a reverse image search to confirm their identity.

2) Social Media Influencer Free Holiday Giveaways: Scammers create fake Tik Tok and Instagram accounts to impersonate popular social media influencers. They offer free product giveaways and include a link to redeem the product. It is a phishing link that steals all of your data.

How to Avoid: Fake accounts have few followers. Never click on any suspicious links.

3) Online Shopping Scams: Teens do most of their holiday shopping online and scammers are creating fake stores and running ads offering holiday discounts. The fraudulent look-a-like website looks may look legitimate at first glance, but any products purchased will never arrive.

How to Avoid: Fake sites have spelling errors in the URL and grammatical errors across the site.
If you are the victim of a scam or attempted scam report it to the FTC, IC3, FBI and IdentityTheft.gov.