The Cultural Mechanism and Protective Intervention of Elderly Fraud in the Digital China Era

The Current Situation of Aging in China & Digitalization Pressure

In recent years, the society of China has quietly entered a stage of profound aging. Because, according to the data released by the State Council of China, the population aged 60 and above in China reached 297 million in the year of 2023, accounting for 21.1% of the total population (State Council). This means that a considerable number of elderly people must live, communicate, and access resources in the rapidly changing digital society. However, the pace of China’s digitalization development is far faster than the adaptation speed of the elderly population. With the popularization of smartphones, mobile payments (WeChat and Alipay), online government services, and even healthcare platforms, it put the elderly under great learning pressure. In the absence of adequate technical support and digital education, they gradually became digitally disadvantaged groups (Helsper 15), who have significant deficiencies in information judgement, security awareness, and media literacy. In the background of structural weakness has lain a cultural and technological foundation for the precise targeting of fraud activities.

The Elderly Have Became the Main Targets of Fraud

There are lots of empirical studies that have shown that elderly people in China have become one of the most frequently targeted groups in fraud activities. According to the data, about 78% of the elderly once received the fraud information, whether by telephone, text messages, social media, or short video platforms, all of which contain a large amount of frequent fraudulent content targeting the elderly (Deng et al.). In the survey of 22,121 elderly, the finding of research is that 46.5% of interviewees suffered different types of experiences of being deceived (Yu et al.). This proportion is significantly higher than that of other age groups, indicating that the elderly not only frequently fall victim to fraud but also face a high risk of actual losses. When facing the massive information flow and the platform algorithm push mechanism brought about by the widespread use of smartphones, the elderly often have difficulty quickly identifying covert, emotional, and culturally manipulative scams, thus being more susceptible to deceptive information. This high-exposure, high-victimization situation indicates that elderly fraud has become a major social issue that combines systemic, cultural, and technological elements.

The Project Objectives

In order to respond to this structural risk, this program is to design a clear and practical fraud prevention guide, combined with a cultural research perspective, that analyzes how fraud utilizes representational strategies, ideological manipulation, and digital inequality to construct “credible deception” (Hall). On the other hand, the objective of this program is not only to provide practical, operable self-protection knowledge for the elderly but also to use WordPress as an open, accessible, and shareable digital resource to provide a knowledge framework for understanding elder fraud, benefiting their children, family members, and the broader public. By combining culture analysis and protective intervention, this project aims to be an intervention in reality, enabling the theories in the cultural studies classroom to truly enter the social field, helping the elderly group enhance their digital security awareness, and confronting the vulnerability caused jointly by culture and technology at the family and community levels (Helsper).

Works Cited

Deng, Yue, et al. “” Auntie, Please Don’t Fall for Those Smooth Talkers”: How Chinese Younger Family Members Safeguard Seniors from Online Fraud.” Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2025.

Hall, Stuart, Jessica Evans, and Sean Nixon. “Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices.” (2024): 1-100.

Helsper, E. (2021). The digital disconnect: The social causes and consequences of digital inequalities.

Yu, S. J., Kuo, C. T., & Tseng, Y. C. (2023). Association of financial literacy and risk preference with fraud exposure and victimization among middle-aged and older adults in China. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 42(1), 89-98.

State Council of the People’s Republic of China. “Over one-fifth of Chinese population older than 60, says official report.” State Council Information Office, 12 Oct. 2024.