Bills And Boomers: Cyber Safety In The 21st Century

A short conversation with my parents is enough to remind me just how technologically illiterate even the smartest of people in the older generation are. But while their antics on the internet of things would be just funny anecdotes, technological illiteracy is a far more serious and pervasive issue - resulting in the loss of hard earned money at best, and suicide at worst. The dimensions and variety of these crimes between the best case and worse, are staggering. Studies show that approximately 3 in 5 “netizens” - or, citizens of the internet have been scammed - a figure that is shocking enough as it is, but made even more so by the fact that a majority of scams go unreported. A 2019 study estimates that the global economy lost over US$3.89 trillion to online fraud - and again, this is only the minuscule amount of cases that do get reported.

- Serika Siriwardhana

Considering the almost infinite scope of cyberspace, it would be impossible to address all aspects related to cyber-crime and exploitation in a single article without sacrificing some degree of depth and/or focus. Today therefore, we’ll deal with cyber fraud that, on average, mostly affects the older generation as they (quite inelegantly) attempt to muddle through these confusing novelties “The Facebook” and “The YouTube”, as they call them. I’ve come to realise, after much thought, that the demographic most vulnerable to scams and fake news are so because, having grown up in an environment where all media they consumed - be it print or television - went through some sort of vetting process. So baby boomers and their parents expect such levels of integrity of information and content to exist on the internet too. This explains the proliferation of fake news and conspiracy theorists which are greatly affecting the world order negatively - as in the case of the appointment of Donald Trump, Brexit, and effective precautions not being taken against COVID-19. A Princeton University study found that people 65 years of age or older are seven times more likely to share and engage with fake news than those aged 18-29. They simply lack digital media literacy necessary to reliably determine the trustworthiness of news online.