The Rise of Youth Cybercrime: Social Trends and Interventions
The actions that lead to cybercrime are increasingly insidious and commonplace, with devastating consequences for victims and perpetrators.
This brief explores the evolution of youth cybercrime as both a social and technological phenomenon, differentiating between cyber-enabled crimes and cyber-dependent crimes.
- Cyber-enabled crimes: fraud, phishing, and identity theft
- Cyber-dependent crimes: ransomware, botnets, and zero-day exploitation
Artificial intelligence (AI) and crime-as-a-service (CaaS) platforms have lowered the barriers to entry for both types of crimes, offering hacking tools via a subscription model.
Case studies illustrate the speed, coordination, and scale of youth involvement in cybercrime, which is part of a broader trend that includes social onboarding pathways, peer-to-peer recruitment, and reputation-based ecosystems.
These ecosystems transform curiosity into participation, and participation into escalation.
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Author's summary: Youth cybercrime is a rising social and technological phenomenon.