Social media and AI-enabled scams, especially those targeting seniors, are on the rise. The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report found that Americans reported $20.877 billion in losses from internet scams in 2025 — a 26% increase from the prior year. Older Americans are the most vulnerable age-group to this type of scam, with $7.749 billion in reported losses to the IC3 from individuals age 60 or older with an average loss of $38,500 per victim. The FTC found that social media was the costliest contact method for fraud in 2025 with reported losses over $2 billion. These figures likely understate the true scale of the problem: Our CFA report estimates that the total true losses from scams may be as high as $148.2 billion for Americans nationwide. 

Criminals are exploiting platform features such as direct messaging, fake profiles, recommendation algorithms, and ad-targeting tools to gain victims’ trust and spread  deceptive content, exposing seniors and other vulnerable groups to financial loss and emotional distress. Even worse, platforms are turning a blind eye to this conduct, or in some instances, even encouraging and profiting off of it.

In partnership with Consumer Reports, The Consumer Federation of America supports model legislation that creates three pillars of protection: (1) imposing liability on platforms that facilitate fraud, (2) requiring platforms to implement safer features to prevent scammers from reaching users, and (3) providing recourse for victims of platform-enabled scams.