It is kind of crazy that growing up I recall hearing a lot of “be careful don’t trust the internet” and then now that same generation of people is falling for all manner of scams and fake news peddlers online.
Apologies if it seems I'm just stoking a stereotype, but this comes from personal experience with family. For a demographic who generally are proud to be "old school", "not computer people", skeptical, distrustful of technology, self-reliant, and at least paid lip service to those ideals when raising their children, they sure do love being lied to and manipulated by the very enemies they claimed to be resistant to.
I also recall hearing, "do as I say, not as I do" a lot as well.
If these folks really did change to be more susceptible to scams though, I hope for my own sake that this is less a function of aging and more a function of being fed a steady diet of conservative propaganda. I can avoid the latter...
<proceeds to believe everything 'printed' on the internet>