How Media Smart Is Teaching Gen Z What Scams Look Like

According to security minister Tom Tugendhat, fraud is the most prevalent crime in the UK, he said speaking in a press release about Media Smart’s new campaign titled ‘Scam Flags Add Up to a Scam’. But the campaign goes beyond stereotypes about who’s vulnerable to fraud – this time the focus is on the youth.

“It’s a sad reality that criminals target young people,” said the minister. “I welcome Media Smart’s work to help teenagers spot and report scam adverts as well as their support of our ‘Stop! Think Fraud’ campaign so we can all detect and avoid fraud.”

As part of a broader literacy programme from Media Smart aimed at helping young people understand advertising and media, the campaign demonstrates to 13-18-year-olds how to identify possible scams and how to avoid them. It also provides resources on how to report scams on social media platforms, Action Fraud, and to the Advertising Standards Authority, and where those affected can go for support.

Co-branded with the new National Campaign Against Fraud – ‘Stop! Think Fraud’, which the Home Office launched in February to provide consistent, clear, and robust anti-fraud advice to the general public, a film and other assets are being pushed to both young people and their teachers and guardians.

Mark Lund OBE, deputy chair of the government’s Online Advertising Taskforce and chair of asbof (a Media Smart supporter), has been working with Media Smart since 2014, around the time he began his seven-year stint as president at McCann Worldgroup UK and Europe – the last full-time executive job he had. He describes his involvement in the educational organisation “as an extension of the last 15 or 20 years of being associated with both advertising creatively but also government, and the legislation and regulatory framework in which advertising operates.”

Media Smart has existed since 2002, but when Mark came in at around the same time as Rachel Barber-Mack, executive director, it was something of a relaunch. “Thanks to Rachel, it’s been a great success since,” says Mark.

A potent force that’s the result of a “nuanced relationship” with the government, Media Smart works closely with the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) and other departments as a partnership with the advertising industry. Mark describes it as part of an exercise “to try and make sure that the industry is constantly keeping aware of where the public worries and sensitivities are, and trying to make sure that our regulation keeps pace with that.” The alternative, of course, is that government has to respond with enforcement once the industry has let these threats get out of hand. “It’s all about making sure that the industry is not regulating too heavy-handedly, but making sure that it's staying on the right side of where people feel the line should be drawn,” he adds.

Digital scamming is a particularly pronounced problem in the UK, where Mark ventures that, “the penetration of digital channels is probably higher in the UK than in anywhere in the world, including China and America.”

Social media is so deeply ingrained in people’s lives now that it’s the natural space for fraudsters to operate in. “It's intensely intimate and yet it's also comparatively anonymous,” says Mark. “So it creates a set of conditions which are wonderful for users, but also quite good for scammers.”

And it’s gen z and the alphas who are most deeply embedded in this world, so that’s where Media Smart is targeting its efforts. “Each of the wave of generations have a slightly different attitude towards how they interact with media,” says Mark. “Generation alpha is probably a bit more wary, to be honest. Gen z was probably the most trusting. Millennials were probably comparatively aware because they'd grown up at least partially without the full exposure to digital media.” 

That’s why Media Smart has put out its latest campaign in a series of education around what to be vigilant about online. Previous efforts focused on body image and greenwashing, but scamming is the focus now. “We decided we wanted to support the industry's efforts around building trust and that this was an important area to focus on for young people,” says Rachel. “So that they know what to do. They're questioning everything they see and fact checking what they see.”

While these scams now take place in TikTok DMs and on crypto trading apps, they’re familiar to many of us. “What's fascinating is that the scams [this campaign is] warning young people against are the sorts of things that basically their parents, both now and in the past, had to deal with,” says Mark. “Financial scamming, dodgy products, attempts to get your identity under some false pretences. What's extraordinary is that the scams are essentially timeless. The way in which they are presented shifts, and therefore how we need to talk about them to a new generation shifts as well.” 

That’s why youth-focused creative agency, Livity, got involved. The team there was crucial in getting the tone right on a range of topics young people are most concerned about: cryptocurrency, online shopping deals, unauthorised remote access of webcams, scholarships, and spoofing. The key was to do it “without that death knell of ‘here's someone grown up to tell you something you don't really want to know,’” Mark says. But the core message is simple: if something looks too good, it probably is. 

“We’re always about education and reaching as many young people as possible,” says Rachel, so the resulting animated films were then targeted tightly at where young people are – the places where they hang out online. The assets are also available for teachers, parents and guardians to use in the classroom and at home. A dedicated support hub  is available on Media Smart’s website with downloadable support guides and access to video content.

To get the reach needed, Media Smart is relying on support from the advertising industry. It receives lots already from the likes of asbof and the ASA, as well as platforms and media owners like Netflix, Yahoo!, Mail Metro Media and Next Gen, whose screens in universities and sixth form colleges help to get directly in front of teenagers. However, there’s more space for the industry to get behind this project with in-kind support such as ad credits. “Regardless of whether you're targeting young people with your advertising, we think it's a responsibility for all of industry,” says Rachel. 

Much of the industry knows that, as the support levels for Media Smart now are at record levels in both its quantity and quality. “The supporters list really does look like a who's who of anyone involved in media or channels that are aimed at younger people,” says Mark. “So much of the good stuff that the industry does in this area is an amalgamation of a lot of shared interests. But basically, everyone who's engaged in advertising in the UK has an interest in keeping trust levels up and public and official levels of approval high, because that's what makes the market successful. It's not just a nice thing to do. It's a really important, commercial Darwinian thing to do as well. And that's what I think keeps the force behind it.”

Rachel agrees. “So we're challenging anybody who's not on the list to be on the list by the end of the week,” she laughs.