I believe the most significant risk difference between the U.S. and other countries is the number of technology devices per household. According to Statista, the United States held around 10.37 devices per family with the UK coming in second with 9.16 and Norway in 3rd with 8.82. These numbers are important because it shows how dependent we are as a country on our devices. This can cause risks because that means kids and young adults are using these devices that might be able to cause an attack on them without them knowing. Phishing attacks and fake ads are examples of things that lead to kids mistakenly collecting malware. It has been reported that in the summer of 2021, over 2.4 million people downloaded games that were riddled with pop-up ads that held many types of damaging software. In other countries that may have a lower rate of individuals with technology devices, this issue might not be as prevalent. The fewer devices a family has the less likely they are to collect these types of risks. Monitoring and parental controls can only go so far when it comes to protecting our youth from the dangers of the internet. Another issue would likely be the amount of information we put out to the public, as of Jan 2021, in the United States, people aged 16 to 64 are on social media at an average of 2 hours a day, 6th country under the worldwide average and 24th country overall. The more time spent on social media increases the rate of identity theft on social media pages, and although we may not be at the top of the list other countries usually don’t spend as much time creating fake pages or stealing identities at the same rate as the United States users do.
Works Cited
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1107307/average-number-connected-devices-households-worldwide/