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 include fraud, phishing, and identity theft, while cyber-dependent crimes include 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.
Through case studies, the brief illustrates the speed, coordination, and scale of youth involvement in cybercrime today, including social onboarding pathways, peer-to-peer recruitment, and reputation-based ecosystems.
These incidents are not isolated but part of a broader trend that transforms curiosity into participation, and participation into escalation.
Author's summary: Youth cybercrime is a rising social and technological phenomenon.