Teaching Children and Teenagers About Online Scams and Financial Safety

Children, Teenagers, and Online Fraud

Online fraud and scams targeting young people are a growing and significantly underestimated risk. Children and teenagers are often perceived as targets only for sexual exploitation or bullying, but financial scams and social engineering attacks directed at young people cause real financial harm to families and can have lasting effects on a young person's confidence and relationship with the online world.

Young people are targeted because they tend to be trusting, are motivated by peer status and social validation, are heavy users of the online environments where scams proliferate, and are often managing their own spending for the first time without the scepticism that more financial experience can provide. Teaching children to recognise and respond to scam attempts is a form of digital literacy that will protect them throughout their lives.

Gaming Scams

Gaming-related scams are among the most common financial frauds affecting children and teenagers. The specific mechanics vary but common patterns include:

• Fake cheat codes and generators: Websites and social media accounts that promise free in-game currency, rare items, or cheat codes in exchange for account credentials or payment. These almost invariably result in account theft or financial fraud, and the promised reward never materialises.
• Phishing through gaming platforms: Messages sent through games or gaming-adjacent platforms claiming to be from game developers or administrators, asking users to verify account details by clicking a link that harvests login credentials.
• Fake item trading: In games where virtual items can be traded, fraudsters manipulate trades to steal high-value items from inexperienced players.
• Charity or cause scams in games: Appeals within gaming communities for donations that are directed to fraudulent accounts.

Teach your child that anything that sounds too good to be true in a gaming context is, and that official game platforms never request passwords or account details via chat messages or third-party websites.

Social Media Scams

Social media platforms are rich environments for scams targeting young people:

• Fake influencer giveaways: Posts that impersonate popular creators and claim to be giving away phones, money, or other prizes to followers who share the post, follow an account, or provide contact details. These harvest data and sometimes request payment for fictitious delivery fees.
• Investment and money-flipping scams: Accounts that promise to double or triple money if it is sent to them, often framed as an investment opportunity. These are straightforwardly fraudulent.
• Romance and friendship scams: Building online relationships with teenagers over a period of time before eventually requesting money, gifts, or financial assistance. These can be highly sophisticated and emotionally manipulative.
• Job offer scams: Targeted at older teenagers seeking employment, offering unusually high pay for minimal work. These typically require payment of a registration fee or the provision of bank details that are then used fraudulently.

Phishing and Social Engineering

Phishing refers to attempts to obtain sensitive information, login credentials, financial information, or personal data, through deceptive communications that appear to come from legitimate sources. Social engineering is the broader practice of manipulating people into actions they would not otherwise take.

Children and teenagers are vulnerable to phishing through email, text messages, social media direct messages, and gaming platforms. Common signs of phishing attempts include: unexpected communications claiming to require urgent action, requests to click links to verify account information, communications that create urgency or fear (your account has been compromised), and communications from addresses or accounts that look almost but not quite identical to official ones.

Teach children to be suspicious of urgency. Fraudsters exploit the impulse to act quickly before thinking carefully. A genuine message from a legitimate company does not require a response within minutes or hours. Taking time to pause, check the sender details carefully, and verify independently (by going directly to the official website rather than clicking any link) is the correct response to any unexpected communication requesting action.

In-App Purchases and Microtransaction Traps

While not always fraudulent in the technical sense, in-app purchases and microtransaction systems in games and apps can result in significant unexpected expenditure, particularly when children have access to payment methods without sufficient understanding of how the charges accumulate.

Enable purchase restrictions through your device's parental control settings. On Apple devices, this is managed through Screen Time settings; on Android, through Family Link. Ensure that purchases require a password or biometric authentication that children do not know.

Have explicit conversations with your child about how in-app purchase systems work, including the psychological design features that encourage spending: limited-time offers, the artificial currency of in-game tokens that obscures the real-world cost, and the social pressure to keep up with peers who have premium items.

Building Critical Thinking About Online Offers

The most durable protection against online scams is not a list of specific scams to avoid but the habit of critical thinking that applies to any novel online situation. Questions to teach children to ask:

• Who is actually behind this? Can I verify their identity through official channels?
• What are they asking for, and why would they need that from me?
• Would this offer exist if there were no financial or personal data gain for the person making it?
• If I received this as a letter through the post, would I find it suspicious?
• What is the worst-case outcome if I engage with this?

Encourage children to come to you with anything that seems unusual or that they are unsure about. Respond to these questions without making them feel foolish for asking: the fact that they have noticed something and sought your input is exactly the right behaviour, regardless of whether the specific thing turned out to be a scam or not.

If Your Child Has Been Scammed

If a child has fallen for an online scam, respond calmly and practically. The emotional priority is ensuring they do not feel shame or excessive blame for what happened: sophisticated scams deceive adults regularly and the fact that they have been caught out does not reflect poorly on their intelligence or character. Report the fraud to the relevant platform and, if money has been transferred, to the relevant financial institution as quickly as possible. Some transactions can be reversed if reported promptly. Report to your national consumer protection or cybercrime reporting service where applicable.

Use the experience as a teaching opportunity once the immediate situation is managed, without making the child feel that their mistake is being repeatedly revisited.