Common Sense Media: Hacking You - Social Engineering & AI
Social engineering doesn’t start by hacking technology. It starts by hacking trust. In this lesson, students work through real-world scenarios—a fake account alert, a cloned voice on the phone, a job offer that’s too good to be true—to figure out the logic behind each scam. They’ll also learn to identify the emotion it targets, spot the red flag feeling it triggers, and think about what they’d check before acting. Students also see why being “good with technology” doesn’t protect anyone, how AI is making these attacks harder to catch, and how a simple approach to pause, verify, and protect makes things safer for everyone.
Objectives
- Analyze real-world scenarios to identify the emotions being elicited and the red flags that signal social engineering
- Explain why social engineering works on anyone, and how AI makes it harder to detect
- Use strategies to pause, verify, and protect before responding when something feels off
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Social engineering doesn’t start by hacking technology. It starts by hacking trust. In this lesson, students work through real-world scenarios—a fake account alert, a cloned voice on the phone, a job offer that’s too good to be true—to figure out the logic behind each scam. They’ll also learn to identify the emotion it targets, spot the red flag feeling it triggers, and think about what they’d check before acting. Students also see why being “good with technology” doesn’t protect anyone, how AI is making these attacks harder to catch, and how a simple approach to pause, verify, and protect makes things safer for everyone.
Objectives
- Analyze real-world scenarios to identify the emotions being elicited and the red flags that signal social engineering
- Explain why social engineering works on anyone, and how AI makes it harder to detect
- Use strategies to pause, verify, and protect before responding when something feels off