Tejasvi Manoj is TIME Magazine’s 2025 Kid of the Year! The high school senior has created a web site to help seniors avoid online fraud. Her grandfather was almost scammed by someone pretending to be her uncle requesting money to pay off a debt. After that incident, she began researching about these scams. Manoj created Shield Seniors as a result.
Both of her parents work in IT. A neighbor, Aarathi Rajamanickam, works with software and cybersecurity and has mentored Manoj on her project. While the web site is still in private preview mode, Manoj gives talks on cybersecurity at places like older adult communities.
As I mentioned, Shield Seniors is in private preview mode. It uses an AI engine to evaluate e-mail or webpages and gives a rating on whether the e-mail or webpage is a scam. She says it has 95% accuracy.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Texas Governor Ken Abbott give Tesjavi Manoj a shout out on X:
Texas is home to bright young leaders like Tejasvi Manoj of Frisco.
She launched Shield Seniors to protect older Texans from fraud.
Now she’s TIME’s Kid of the Year.
Tejasvi truly embodies the Texas spirit—grit, innovation, and service.https://t.co/c5zTmenhYI
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) September 9, 2025
Congratulations to Tejasvi Manoj!
(photo credit: Zerb Mellish for TIME)
