Can we help protect the YouTube / TikTok generation, or is it not worth trying?

kuratowski

I think those of us who read financial news and log onto investment websites are particularly prone to getting targeted by these financially-oriented scam ads.  There's a certain kind of ads I see repeatedly which makes my skin crawl (when I bother to look at the borders of the screen).  I absolutely blame the ad brokers for enabling these scammers.

tebbins

I think more younger people fall prey but perhaps older victims lose more, so on a money-weighted basis the average victim's age may be skewed.
I also think the generations that grew up with the internet are perhaps better equipped to discern ad from genuine content, which does find a way to float to the top (e.g. The Plain Bagel springs to mind, this forum etc.).
What's ridiculous is the complete dearth of policing and even civil regulation this crime attracts. I'll avoid saying anything political but this should be a national scandal on the scale of bank-runs and previous crashes.

steampowered

Scam advertisements are nothing new. They have been happening since Victorian times:


Now that there are misleading ads on the internet, it tends to be the older generation who are less technology savvy and that much more prone to falling for blatant misinformation.

You don't tend to find younger people watching Fox News or reading the Daily Mail, though I'm sure some do. 

Brie

Personally I think the best way for someone to learn about false information is to see where it is wrong. And compare it to what is correct.

For example - way before IT/websites/YouTube and all things related we read books.  And books (and newspapers and pamphlets) can present weird opinions and be full of errors.  I learned this when it was pointed out that a set of encyclopedia that we had didn't have someone date of death listed.  Therefore it was inaccurate.  

Today all we need to do is point to 2 different websites/bloggers that give different information/opinions on the same subject and suggest that both need to be considered before we decide which is correct.  And as much as some will show that someone (Trump? Or pick any public figure) is an evil, misogynistic, greedy egotist others will provide evidence to prove exactly the opposite.  And while I know which I might believe I will respect the rights of the next person to choose the alternative as long as they have looked at the evidence and tried to make an intelligent decision.

It's only when someone only considers one side that there is a problem.

Eco_Miser

steampowered said:

Scam advertisements are nothing new. They have been happening since Victorian times:

Probably a lot longer than that, although low literacy rates mean many older scam ads will have been vocal rather than printed.

steampowered said:

Now that there are misleading ads on the internet, it tends to be the older generation who are less technology savvy and that much more prone to falling for blatant misinformation.

You don't tend to find younger people watching Fox News or reading the Daily Mail, though I'm sure some do.

This older generation who are less technologically savvy - how old are they?

I'm one 71 year old who's been using the Internet since the days of dial-up and email accounts and the necessary disk given free with newspapers, magazines, or just pick the disk up.

I don't think falling for blatant misinformation depends on the medium the misinformation is contained in, nor particularly on the age of the target, though the younger generation are more naïve through inexperience.

Diplodicus

We are blessed to live in the age of the invention of the internet.

Imo the greatest advance since the opposable thumb.

And the best thing on the internet is Youtube.

Nowadays, I cannot access a clip without some somebody telling me to get ready for "The Great Reset."

That's ok. If the price of free access to the internet is some conspiracy theorist, we can click right through them.

Malthusian

Eco_Miser said:

This older generation who are less technologically savvy - how old are they?

I'm one 71 year old who's been using the Internet since the days of dial-up and email accounts and the necessary disk given free with newspapers, magazines, or just pick the disk up.

I don't think falling for blatant misinformation depends on the medium the misinformation is contained in, nor particularly on the age of the target, though the younger generation are more naïve through inexperience.

You were 50 when the first dot-com wave was in its heyday. While you were happily surfing the new frontier, managers and directors 10 years younger than you were ordering their secretaries to print their emails out so they could read them. Now they are well-off but technologically incompetent 60-somethings and considered the "older generation". They tend to be the ones who appear in the Daily Mail because they sent thousands of pounds or more to some Ukrainian because he asked them to.

Unless your body goes first, eventually your brain will start fading and your ability to use the Internet in your 80s or 90s will do you no good when it comes to resisting scams.

I'm not sure how much correlation there is between age and vulnerability to scams, even though there's a lot of research on it. If you're older you might be more vulnerable to a new form of scam because you're unused to the technology involved, or you might be less vulnerable because you don't even use it. Younger victims may appear less often in statistics simply because they lose less money and don't tell anyone about it or seek recovery. There are a lot of factors that resist measurement.

Eco_Miser

While you were happily surfing the new frontier, managers and directors 10 years younger than you were ordering their secretaries to print their emails out so they could read them. Now they are well-off but technologically incompetent 60-somethings and considered the "older generation".

Ah, the wilfully ignorant. I suspect they exist at all ages.

Apodemus

Perhaps the biggest difference in the modern era is the separation of audiences.  In the "old days", while the print media had a certain amount of separation of markets, the choice of newspapers and indeed tv or radio stations was relatively limited, and reached broader ranges of age and interest.  Nowadays it is much easier to live in a segregated information "bubble" and, as mentioned above, even the platforms themselves are becoming age-separated.  It means that audiences of all ages are less likely to see general informative content, including the sort of introductory financial information that can make people more aware of the risks and opportunities available to them.  In the past you had to pass through the financial pages to get from the cartoons to the sports pages, now you have to actually choose to even see the headlines. 

Hexane

I certainly wouldn't recommend this fellow as a moral or financial guide, but this video has some important messages for the young audiences with whom he is popular: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IcvRe8bQhU (youtube - Tech Lead, "How I lost $350K"

(no, the important messages are not about whether commodities are good investments, nor about his mis-use of certain terms)