TIME has named Tejasvi Manoj its Kid of the Year for 2025 after the Indian-origin student from Texas built a website, Shield Seniors, to help older adults spot and report online scams. The platform grew out of a close call within her own family and has since gained national recognition for its practical approach to a growing problem.
The idea began in February 2024 when scammers emailed Tejasvi’s 85-year-old grandfather asking for USD 2,000. He almost transferred the money before a phone call to the supposed sender revealed the trick. “I never asked you for money,” came the response. The near miss prompted Tejasvi, then a 16-year-old junior in Frisco, to research how widespread such frauds were and to build a tool aimed at the 60-plus population.
Her research showed the scale of the issue. In 2024, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received nearly 860,000 reports of scams, with potential losses exceeding USD 16 billion. Fraud targeting people over the age of 60 accounted for nearly USD 5 billion, a rise of 32 percent over the previous year.
The Federal Trade Commission also found that older adults losing more than USD 10,000 to online scams had quadrupled between 2020 and 2024, and losses of USD 100,000 or more rose seven-fold to a total of USD 445 million in 2024.
Shield Seniors is designed to be simple and practical for older users. It has a “Learn” section with plain guidance on internet safety, an “Ask” chatbot that gives short, easy answers, an “Analyze” feature that lets users upload suspicious messages for automated review, and a “Report” section that links victims to relevant authorities.
As Tejasvi told TIME: “Our goal for Shield Seniors is to make sure older adults are independent and know what to look for. We want to make sure they’re able to navigate the online world confidently, with independence, and with dignity.” The site’s AI analysis, she says, operates at about 95 percent accuracy in distinguishing scams from legitimate messages.
Tejasvi built the site while juggling school, Scouting America activities and community work. Her efforts won an honourable mention in the 2024 Congressional App Challenge and led to a 2025 TEDx talk in Plano on building “digital bridges” across generations.
TIME recognised her largely for Shield Seniors and for her outreach to seniors; she is also the first Kid of the Year to be named a TIME for Kids Service Star. After a Dallas Observer story, AARP invited her to demonstrate the site and, she wrote in a follow-up email, “They provided feedback and guidance, and shared my work on LinkedIn, helping me connect with a wider network of people.”
Her technical background comes from early exposure to computing at home and to mentors in the industry. Her father, Manoj Ganapathy, sums up the family’s leanings plainly: “Everyone in my family is into tech.” A neighbour and mentor in cybersecurity, Aarathi Rajamanickam, told TIME she regularly advised Tejasvi and helped shape the project.
Shield Seniors remains in private preview while Tejasvi seeks funding to move the site to a larger AI platform and expand its reach. She plans to study computer science at university and hopes to take Shield Seniors into more assisted-living facilities for in-person seminars.
Her closing counsel for families is simple: “Just make sure to check up on your loved ones,” Tejasvi says. “Make sure that they’re staying safe online.”
