Many children now split their days between homework on Google Docs, TikTok trends, Roblox realms, and AI chatbots. The rails that once separated school, play, and friendship have merged into one hyper-connected feed that never truly sleeps—especially during holidays when supervision dips and screen time spikes. That always-on presence gives young people the skills to navigate technology, but not necessarily the judgement to decode deceit.
Cybercriminals have noticed. Thanks to off-the-shelf phishing kits and generative-AI text engines, criminals can spin up hundreds of believable lures in minutes, then A/B test them on children until one sticks. Many of these malicious campaigns now borrow the same behavioral science tricks used by legitimate game designers—like variable rewards, streaks, and bright social signals—to keep kids clicking while data or dollars are quietly siphoned away.
In this article, I'll dissect the growing number of cyber scams targeted specifically at children, and the lessons and security protocols needed to ensure children can navigate digital spaces safely and securely.
The growing scope of cyber scams targeting children
Young users are prime prey because they combine boundless curiosity with limited risk awareness. Developmentally, tweens and teens crave novelty and social approval, impulses scammers exploit by dangling "free Robux" or promises of influencer shout-outs. Even technically savvy kids struggle to spot messages written by large language models (LLMs) that mimic real support emails or group chat slang with uncanny accuracy.
Hard numbers confirm the danger. The FBI's 2024 Internet Crime Complaint Center report logged 17,993 complaints from victims under 20, representing $22.5 million in losses, a 14% jump from the previous year. Across the Atlantic, the UK Safer Internet Centre's 2025 research found 79% of children encounter scams at least monthly and nearly one-fifth know a peer who has lost money, with 26% of victims blaming themselves.
Sextortion is one of the most insidious and deadly techniques. A January 2024 FBI alert warned that financially motivated sextortion had generated more than 13,000 reports and at least 20 teenage suicides in just 18 months, with perpetrators often operating from West Africa and Southeast Asia.
Device ubiquity magnifies exposure. In July 2025, Pew Research Center reported that 95% of U.S. teens have access to a smartphone and 46% say they are online "almost constantly." McAfee's "State of the Scamiverse," released January 6, 2025, estimates that the average American now encounters 14.4 scam attempts per day, many driven by deepfake images or AI-generated voice.
Young gamers are particularly under threat. Between April 1, 2024, and March 31, 2025, Kapersky blocked more than 19 million attempts to push malicious or unwanted files disguised as hit titles such as GTA, Minecraft, and Roblox—a campaign that reached more than 400,000 individual users in 12 months.
Common cyber scams and their impacts on youth
Phishing and brand impersonation traps
In April 2025, Roblox's own developer forum lit up with warnings about a spoofed "Security Alert" email that perfectly copied the platform's password reset screen, right down to the child's avatar, before siphoning credentials to a look-alike domain.
The problem is larger than one game: phishing already ranks among the 10 riskiest fraud types for 18- to 24-year-olds, accounting for 10.3% of all complaints and triggering a monetary loss in nearly one-in-five cases. Once a single password is stolen, the ripple often spreads to email, homework portals, and social feeds where the same credentials are reused, giving scammers a launchpad for further abuse.
Children's tech literacy can actually be a double-edged sword here. For example, their proficiency at using QR codes is going to make them more vulnerable to quishing (phishing using malware-loaded QR codes).
Gaming currency lures and mod download malware
Nothing motivates a young gamer like free upgrades, and cybercriminals know it. Kaspersky's global telemetry recorded more than 5.6 million malicious download attempts masquerading as add-ons and in-game currency for just three titles—Minecraft, Roblox, and Among Us—in one year, with Minecraft alone drawing more than three million hits.
The payloads ranged from adware to full backdoors that can exfiltrate saved passwords or install crypto-miners that slow a child's laptop to a crawl.
Holiday seasons bring a second wave: Bitdefender's 2024 year-end advisory documented fake Christmas-themed mobile games that sideload data-stealing Trojans under the guise of "limited-time skins." The immediate prize might be a handful of stolen Robux, but the longer-term cost can include drained parent credit cards and accounts locked for weeks.
Social media giveaways, bogus stores, and fake checks
Scams migrate wherever teens hang out. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has flagged a surge in "artist" DMs on Instagram and Snapchat that send a counterfeit check and instruct victims to forward part of the money to a third party, a classic fake-check fraud scaled for young people.
Online shopping traps can be extremely costly. Online purchase fraud now constitutes 29% of all scams reported by 18- to 24-year-olds, and an astonishing 81.4% of those who engage lose money, often for sneakers or concert tickets that never arrive.
Because these "stores" advertise through disappearing Stories and hashtag challenges, evidence vanishes quickly, leaving teens to explain missing funds without a paper trail.
Sextortion and AI-powered voice cloning
Sextortion makes the cyberthreat to children even more deadly. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) now receives almost 100 reports of financial sextortion every single day, and it has linked the crime to at least 36 teen suicides between 2021 and 2024.
The abuse has become pervasive: one in five teens has already faced a sextortion threat, one in six was 12 or younger at first contact, and nearly one-third of cases escalate within the first 24 hours. The psychological toll is severe: one in seven victims reported self-harm, a figure that leaps to 28 percent among LGBTQ+ youth who often lack offline support.
Technology is supercharging the threat. 13% of recent incidents involved AI-generated deepfake nudes, while the NCMEC has logged a 1,325% surge in CyberTipline reports tied to generative-AI content during 2024 alone.
Offenders are also weaponizing audio. There has been a wave of "virtual kidnapping" calls that use cloned voices, which can be particularly insidious when only 27% of people feel confident they could tell a real distress call from an AI fake.
The real-world fallout
Financial hits multiply fast: the under-24 cohort now suffers a median loss of $200 per scam, higher than any older age group, reversing the longstanding belief that only seniors pay big.
Yet dollars tell only half the story. Clinicians who counsel victims note spikes in anxiety, self-blame, and school avoidance, particularly after sextortion or account takeovers that erase months of in-game progress.
Parents, meanwhile, grapple with mysterious credit card bills and devices bricked by malware, forcing costly clean-ups and eroding trust at home. Equipped with ever-cheaper AI tooling, scammers are turning adolescent curiosity into a profitable and psychologically bruising revenue stream, making robust safeguards and open family dialogue more vital than ever.
Actionable strategies for cyber vigilance
Empowering through conversation and critical thinking
Safety starts with trust. Schedule regular "device debriefs" where kids can describe odd DMs without fear of punishment. Role play scenarios, like "what if a stranger offers 10,000 V-Bucks?", to practice skepticism. The UK's Safer Internet Day surveys show 74% of young people actively want practical lessons on spotting scams, so lean into that appetite.
Hardening accounts and devices
Sit down together and build four-word passphrases, then switch on two-factor authentication everywhere. Family password managers such as NordPass or 1Password make unique logins painless. Security suites like Bitdefender, Norton, Avast, or Surfshark bundle anti-phishing engines and parental dashboards, while browser extensions like Guardio or Bitdefender Scamio flash a warning screen before a dodgy link loads.
Leveraging smart tools and spending controls
Most parental control suites now include GPS-based screentime schedules and AI-driven content filters that update daily as new scam domains appear. Enable spending PINs on consoles and consider using single-use virtual credit cards or gift cards for in-game purchases. A child-friendly VPN can mask IP addresses during livestreams, thwarting doxxing and "swatting" attempts.
Lock down privacy and know what to do when things go wrong
Every quarter, prune friend lists, set profiles to friends-only, and audit camera and microphone permissions. Teach kids to recognize the browser padlock and to hover over URLs before clicking. If a scam slips through, screenshot evidence, report the account, reset passwords, and enable two-factor authentication. When money has changed hands, call the bank's fraud line and file a complaint with the FTC or Internet Crime Complaint Center (in the UK, Action Fraud). For sextortion, NCMEC's Report Remove tool can help scrub illicit images and connect victims with counsellors.
Conclusion
The web offers children unparalleled opportunities for creativity and community, but its darker corners are evolving just as quickly. We need to combine judgement-free dialogue with robust technical safeguards so families, schools, and security teams can turn scam-savvy behavior from a panic response into an everyday habit.
Teaching youngsters to pause, question, and verify today will let them navigate tomorrow's mixed-reality metaverse with confidence instead of fear.
