Who Is Tejasvi Manoj? Indian-Origin Teen Named TIME's Kid Of The Year

Tejasvi Manoj, a 17-year-old Indian-origin girl from Texas, has been named as TIME's Kid of the Year. The teenager has transformed the world of cybercrime by creating a website, Shield Seniors, to educate the elderly about cybercrime and to protect themselves from online scams. 

What Motivated Her to Do This?

In February 2024, 16-year-old Tejasvi Manoj and her father were on their way home from a Scouting America camp when Tejasvi’s father saw he had five missed calls from his 85-year-old father. He called back, and his father explained that he had received an urgent email from Tejasvi’s uncle, asking for a $2,000 transfer to settle an unexpected debt. Tejasvi’s grandfather was prepared to send the money, but her father urged him not to. At the suggestion of Tejasvi’s grandmother, the grandfather called the uncle directly to confirm the request was legitimate. It wasn't, and the family quickly realised they had stumbled upon a scam.

Enraged that criminals were trying to take advantage of her grandfather's lack of tech savviness, Tejasvi went to her room as soon as she got home and began researching the prevalence of such scams. She discovered they are, in fact, very common.

According to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, it received nearly 860,000 reports of scams, with potential losses exceeding $16 billion. Of those, acts of fraud targeting people over the age of 60 accounted for nearly $5 billion, a 32% increase over the previous year.

Within a span of 1 year, she designed Shield Seniors. “If you ask ChatGPT or Gemini questions about cybersecurity, they are going to give you, like, 10 paragraphs of answers with very hard-to-understand terminology,” she told TIME, when asked whether Gen-AI can solve the issue. “That works for some people, but it doesn’t work for most older adults.”

Shield Seniors is still under development. It currently uses a free AI engine, which limits its capabilities and the number of users it can support, which is why it's in a private preview. Tejasvi is raising money so she can upgrade to a more powerful, commercial AI platform. She stated, "We plan to open it to a wider audience once we secure funding to support broader access.”

This is supposed to bring people a sense of 'You’re not alone,' says Tejasvi. “A lot of people are embarrassed that they got scammed, but this isn’t something you should be embarrassed about. It’s just a learning experience. You should report it to help make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”