Who Is Tejasvi Manoj? TIME's 2025 Kid Of The Year On A Mission To Protect Senior Citizens From Cybercrime

Tejasvi Manoj, an Indian-origin teenager from Texas, has been named TIME's Kid of the Year 2025 for her efforts to protect elderly people from cybercrime. The 17-year-old girl achieved recognition for her work on digital literacy among senior citizens to protect them from online scams.

“TIME's 2025 Kid of the Year Tejasvi Manoj built Shield Seniors, a website designed to educate the 60-plus demographic about what online scams look like, analyse suspicious emails and messages users upload, and, if the communications prove fraudulent, provide links to report them,” TIME Magazine said in a post.

Tejasvi Manoj was born in California and raised in Dallas, Texas. Both her parents are IT professionals and she herself is an avid coder.

As per TIME, she is a member of Scouting America and holds an Eagle Scout rank. She also plays the violin in her school orchestra. 

The Indian American teenager spends time teaching maths and English online to Bhutanese refugees through Vibha, a non-profit that works on education and job skills in India.

Beyond teaching, she lends her support to the North Texas Food Bank’s Young Advocates Council and participates with social enterprise TangoTab to pack meals for families struggling with hunger.

Tejasvi also delivered a 2025 TEDx talk in Plano, Texas, on the need for “digital bridges” for all demographics. She earned an honourable mention at the 2024 Congressional App Challenge, a competition that celebrates original student-led app innovations in the United States.

She wants to pursue higher studies in computer science. However, her fame primarily stems from her work on ‘Shield Seniors’, a website meant for senior citizens.

Tejasvi created the Shield Seniors platform to spread awareness about online scams among senior citizens and how to avoid them. She was inspired to launch the campaign to protect elderly people from online fraud when her grandfather almost got scammed in February 2024. 

“Tejasvi was surprised that there was such a lack of awareness among her grandparents,” her mother said, as per TIME’s report.

“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,” her mother said.

Shield Seniors has been developed to help elderly people feel safe online, offering tools to report cyber fraud and spot scams. With its large fonts and calm blue design, the site is easy to navigate and reassuring for those shaken by online deceit. She tested early versions with her grandparents and community elders before finalising the layout.

“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,” says Tejasvi.

However, the website is now in its early stages, operating on a free AI engine that limits both functionality and reach. For now, the platform is accessible only in private preview. 

Tejasvi is actively raising funds to shift to a commercial-grade AI system, which would allow the service to scale. “We plan to open it to a wider audience once we secure funding to support broader access,” she said.