Digitally native Gen Zers aren't immune to romance scams

Gen Zers aren't as immune to romance scams as they might think (stock image).

Thai Liang Lim/Getty Images

• Gen Zers lost more money to online scams than baby boomers last year, according to a survey.
• But they may still feel immune to romance scams.
• Experts believe isolation during the pandemic may have made them more vulnerable to such scams.

Gen Zers may think they are digitally savvy and immune to online scams, but that very thought may leave them vulnerable to being lured into nefarious schemes.

"Many Gen Zers are confident in their ability to spot scams, but scammers are evolving just as quickly," Bryn Thompson, the marketing director of Phonely, a scam-protection telephone service provider, told Business Insider.

"With romance scams in particular, scammers exploit emotional connections and rapidly build trust, which can lead to financial exploitation before the victim even realizes what's happening."

It's long been a cliché that those who get wrapped up in romance scams are older because they have a smaller social circle, are divorced or separated, and are simply more lonely.

But many Gen Zers went to college or started their careers during the COVID pandemic, meaning several of their formative years were interrupted, leaving them longing for connections too.

Catfishing is rife on dating apps, as are the filters and subtle image and video enhancers that have become so ingrained in social media posts that they are almost undetectable. All of which forms a gray area where scammers can thrive.

Trust in the internet

A Better Business Bureau survey of 1,027 respondents in the US and Canada, released in April, found that Gen Zers lose more money to internet scams than baby boomers in 2023.

The Annual Cybersecurity Attitudes and Behaviors Report, released by the National Cybersecurity Alliance in 2022, surveyed over 3,000 people from the US, UK, and Canada and found that Gen Zers noted a higher rate of falling for romance scams (15%) than Gen Xers (8%) and baby boomers (4%).

Scams are always evolving, and the tricks Gen Zers believe they are wise to may be replaced by increasingly technologically advanced schemes they don't see coming.

Lauren Hendry Parsons, the head of communications at ExpressVPN, told BI that Gen Zers are more acquainted with meeting people online and having entire relationships through social media.

"Your willingness to talk to someone you don't know online goes exponentially up depending on how young you are," Hendry Parsons said. "Which opens that extra channel for potential exposure."

Overconfident about AI

According to Kevin Lee, the trust and safety architect at the fraud prevention platform Sift, the assumption that Gen Zers are too savvy to fall for a romance scam may leave them vulnerable.

A Sift survey of 1,066 US adults earlier this year found that 81% of Gen Z believe they can spot AI-generated fraud, though they were successfully phished this way at a higher rate (31%) than Gen Xers (18%), millennials (25%), and baby boomers (11%).

Deepfakes and other AI tools are developing all the time, Lee said, with scammers now able to create entirely fake identities on dating profiles, images, and videos.

"This technology allows criminals to seem real during phone calls or text messages," he said. "Making it challenging to distinguish between real and fake interactions."

Hendry Parsons said the ubiquitousness of tools like Facetune and Photoshop is making it challenging for people to determine whether someone is really who they say they are.

An ExpressVPN survey of 2,000 UK adults aged 18-50 last year found that 34% of respondents had created a fake dating profile, and 27% used AI to improve the look of their photos.

"It's not just scammers using these things; it's not just people with nefarious purposes, but it could be," Hendry Parsons said. "Which is fundamentally that gray space where scammers proliferate and succeed in encouraging people to hand over their data or hand over money."

Those aged 18 to 24 were also more likely than average to have been catfished out of any age group, with 34% believing they had been the victim of it, according to the ExpressVPN survey.

Increased isolation

The COVID-19 pandemic isolated people and may have left many young people with their guards down.

Perpetua Neo, a psychologist and leadership coach with expertise in toxic relationships, told BI that if you are lonely, "then the way your brain sees the world is very different."

"When you are in a state of anguish or anxiety, then you're likely to latch onto somebody else without really thinking too much because it's like any port in the storm," she said.

Many zoomers missed out on several years of dating during global lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and scammers can exploit that desire for connection.

"The regular journey an adolescent is meant to take was disrupted," Neo said. "At the same time, it was a pandemic where we were electronically connected — which can give the impression that we have social rituals and bonds, but which may be superficial."

People are still processing the years lost to the pandemic, particularly Gen Zers, whose brains were still developing, Neo added.

Unresolved trauma and mental health challenges put us in a state of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, with our amygdala — the fear center of the brain — firing up regularly.

"This can make us more impulsive, less thoughtful of our choices, and can be a risk factor for romance scams," Neo said.

Neo said scammers are highly sophisticated at creating profiles they think their marks will like. For some, this may involve a life of luxury, which may include travel, fancy meals, and expensive clothes.

They're also well-versed in manipulation, she added, knowing that with the right push and pull of attention, they can hook their victims in with love-bombing and playing on fears of abandonment.

"You are trained to answer them, and you're trained to give them information," Neo said. "You're trained to trust them, and then they start to build this idea of the future together really, really fast."

A shared struggle

Once the bond is formed, scammers will get to work. Gen Zers understand what it's like to struggle, with many facing economic instability and having difficulty with bills, rent, and finding jobs.

This shared vulnerability, accelerated by the isolation of the pandemic, is something scammers can exploit, Hendry Parsons warned.

For example, a new friend or romantic connection made on social media may say they don't have enough money for a plane ticket for a visit and ask to borrow money. They might say they can't afford a Netflix subscription, but they want to watch the same show together and ask to share your account.

Many couples do this simple act to show trust. But when combined with the chance that your Netflix password may be similar to your online banking ones, this innocuous sharing of one service becomes "an entire threat vector," Hendry Parsons said, with the danger of identity theft and further fraud.

"You're actually opening up a Pandora's box of your entire online identity," she said. "Something that's small with the wrong person can become a lot bigger."

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