Report: 82.9% of Young Adults Have Been Tricked by Suspicious Links

Young adults are reportedly vulnerable to phishing scams, despite being widely considered as “digital natives” who know how to avoid them.

So said the lead author of two studies of Instagram users between 16 and 29, when interviewed by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) for a report posted Tuesday (March 18).

One of the studies found that 82.9% of these young adults were tricked at least once by a suspicious link in a message, Jennifer Klütsch, a Ph.D. candidate and research associate in the work and engineering psychology department at RWTH Aachen University in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, said in the report.

“Young adults use most social-media services more than any other age group, which makes them good targets,” Klütsch said. “The issue is that frequent social-media use leads to people making quick, instinctive decisions instead of systematically evaluating risks.”

The studies found that young adults are more likely than others to simply see if they recognize the sender of the message rather than scrutinizing a suspicious link, and more likely to make impulsive decisions to click on a link and enter information because they fear missing out on social experiences, according to the report.

PYMNTS Intelligence recently found that 21% of Gen Z consumer reported falling for scams initiated through social media platforms.

Scammers often use the channels that are most likely to engage specific age groups and personalize their messaging to align it with consumers’ fears, aspirations or daily habits, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and Featurespace collaboration, “How Scammers Tailor Financial Scams to Individual Consumer Vulnerabilities.”

While scams reach across demographic groups, younger consumers are more likely than older ones to become victims, according to another PYMNTS Intelligence and Featurespace collaboration, “The Impact of Financial Scams on Consumers’ Finances and Banking Habits.”

The report found that 39% of millennial and 36% of Generation Z respondents reported losses in their households, compared to 19% of baby boomers and seniors.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported in December 2022 that younger people were more likely than older adults to report losing money to fraud.

The FTC said in a Data Spotlight that adults between the ages of 18 and 59 were 34% more likely than those 60 and older to report experiencing scams in 2021. It also said that these younger adults were 86% more likely than older ones to report losses to online shopping fraud, 330% more likely to report investment scams and 448% more likely to report job scams and employment agencies.

“Many people think scams mostly affect older adults,” the Data Spotlight said. “But reports to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel tell a different story: anyone can be scammed.”