Time and Time for Kids have named Tejasvi Manoj, a17-year-old Indian American teen from Frisco, Texas, 2025 Kid of the Year, “recognizing one exceptional young person making the world a brighter place.”
Digital defender Manoj has been recognized for her service work teaching digital literacy to protect seniors from cybercrime, the magazine stated.
“I started volunteering in sixth grade…I think it’s really important; if you’re lucky yourself, you want to make sure other people feel loved and lucky too. It just makes me feel really happy, knowing that I can make a difference,” she told Time.
“The unnamed cyber criminals trying to scam seniors out of their money got more than they bargained for when they targeted Tejasvi Manoj’s grandfather back in February, 2024,” writes Time of the 2025 choice.
Tejasvi, then a 16-year-old junior at Lebanon Trail High School in Frisco, Texas, was driving home from Scouting America camp with her father when he suddenly noticed five missed calls on his phone—all from his 85-year-old father.
READ: Indian American Ram Mohan indicted into Internet Hall of Fame (
He called back, and the older man reported that he had received an urgent email from another relative, Tejasvi’s uncle, asking for $2,000 to settle an unexpected debt. Given the apparent emergency, Tejasvi’s grandfather was prepared to transfer the funds—but her father urged him not to and the grandfather, at the suggestion of his wife, then called the uncle to see if the request was legitimate.
“I never asked you for money,” came the response. “Please don’t send anything until I can look into what’s going on.”
It was a near miss for the unsuspecting senior. The fact that criminals would seek to take advantage of an old man’s lack of sophistication about the workings of the internet galled Tejasvi. When she got home she went to her room and immediately began researching how common such scams are. Very common, it turns out.
“Within the year she had built and launched Shield Seniors, a website and, soon, mobile app, designed to educate the 60-plus demographic about what online scams look like, analyze suspicious emails and messages users upload, and, if the communications prove fraudulent, provide links to report them.”
“At TIME, we regularly profile world leaders and next-generation changemakers. Kid of the Year elevates the very youngest, recognizing their accomplishments as they chart a course toward a brighter future,” said TIME for Kids Editor-in-Chief Andrea Delbanco. “We’re giving kids a platform, and watching them use it to inspire other young people to follow in their footsteps.”
In 2024, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center 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.
Seniors represent a target-rich cohort for the bad guys. They’re typically retired, sitting on pensions and 401(k)s, and may be naive to the techniques favored by con artists and reprobates who run riot on the internet.
READ: Arvind Krishna, Anima Anandkumar win 2025 TIME100 AI Impact Awards (
According to the Federal Trade Commission, the number of older adults who lost more than $10,000 to online scams increased fourfold from 2020 to 2024. For those who lost $100,000 or more, the increase was seven-fold, for a total of $445 million in 2024 alone. And none of those figures includes losses victims were too embarrassed to report.
“Tejasvi was surprised that there was such a lack of awareness among her grandparents,” says Aishwarya Manoj, her mother. “It was like, Why did you not know? That’s when she went on with her research and found out that it was not an isolated case with her grandparents, but a much larger problem.”
Older Americans clearly need protection, and Tejasvi was determined to provide it. Within the year she had built and launched Shield Seniors, a website designed to educate the 60-plus demographic about what online scams look like, analyze suspicious emails and messages users upload, and, if the communications prove fraudulent, provide links to report them.
The site is currently available in a private preview mode only, pending more R&D and fundraising, but is already—like its creator—making itself known.
Tejasvi was recognized with an honorable mention in the 2024 Congressional App Challenge; delivered a 2025 TEDx talk in Plano, Texas, about the need to build “digital bridges” to all demographics; and makes occasional appearances at local assisted-living facilities, demonstrating her website and teaching seminars about cybercrime.