Senior News Line: Teen teaches seniors about cybersecurity

Tejasvi Manoj, a 17-year-old from Texas, was named in 2025 as Time magazine Kid of the Year. Her claim to fame? Teaching seniors how to avoid cyber scams.

Her reasoning for the task was personal — her grandfather was nearly hit by a scammer who was pretending to be a relative demanding money. Thankfully the grandfather called another relative before he hit that “send” button.

This is one brilliant young lady. Not only does she teach cyber security at senior centers, but she developed an online teaching program called Shield Seniors at shieldseniors.com.

While the site isn’t fully up and running yet, it’s one we will need to keep an eye on when it does start.

Have you heard of TED talks? TED is a platform where the best and the brightest among us give short talks on all types of topics.

If you want to see this sharp young lady during her TED talk, go online to y2u.be/v3800D3xHQo.

If you want to hear more from her while you’re on YouTube, put her name — Tejasvi Manoj — in the search box. You’ll be impressed.

Two years ago there were 860,000 scams reported by seniors and $4.8 billion was lost in one year alone. Why is it scammers come after us?

They perceive that we have a lot of money. After all, we’re retired, so we must be rich, right?

We didn’t grow up in the tech generations — taught to handle digital devices by the age of 3 and able to easily spot scams.

We’re also, to our occasional detriment, too polite and trusting when we talk to others. It makes it all too easy for a scammer to manipulate us on the phone.

To learn more about how to avoid scams, go online to the Federal Trade Commission website at ftc.gov and put “scammers,” “scams against seniors” or “senior scams” in the search box.