Plano, Texas \u2014 In many ways, Tejasvi Manoj of Plano, Texas, is an average 17-year-old.<\/p>\n
“You’ve got to balance, like, all of your classes, and then you have college applications as well,” Manoj told CBS News.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But she’s spending much of her senior year of high school with a different type of senior, visiting older adult community centers, where she teaches them how to avoid being financially scammed<\/a>. <\/p>\n Her calling started last year when Manoj’s grandfather was the target of a scam effort in which he received a text message from someone pretending to be a family member, claiming an emergency and asking him to wire $2,000 to a bank account. <\/p>\n Fortunately, Manoj’s grandfather and grandmother contacted family members and discovered the scam before wiring the money. <\/p>\n But the event was alarming to Manoj, who began researching and subsequently building a website and app called Shield Seniors, which shows what online scams look like and how to report them.<\/p>\n In July, she did a TEDx talk<\/a>. And this week, she made the cover<\/a> of Time magazine as its “Kid of the Year.” <\/p>\n “So I found out 12 hours before the article released,” Manoj said. “I was in so much shock. It was the greatest surprise of my life, honestly.”<\/p>\n Manoj says her research shows scammers are increasingly using artificial intelligence<\/a>. <\/p>\n