Understanding LinkedIn's risks for teenagers, including recruitment scams, fake job offers, and unsolicited adult contact.
Official age
16+
We recommend
16+
Developer
Microsoft (LinkedIn Corporation)
Risks
3
LinkedIn is a professional networking platform where people build a career profile, connect with others, and look for jobs. Its UK minimum age is 16. Because it presents itself as a serious, professional space, teenagers and parents can underestimate the risks — but LinkedIn is a common channel for recruitment scams, fake internships, and adults using a professional pretext to contact young people.
Older teenagers use LinkedIn to look for part-time work, apprenticeships, internships, and their first jobs, to research universities and employers, and to build an early professional profile. Sixth-formers are often encouraged by schools to create accounts. The professional framing lowers young people's guard: a message from a stranger feels legitimate when it arrives with a company logo and a job title. Scammers exploit this by posing as recruiters, offering fake roles that harvest personal and banking details, request 'training fees', or funnel applicants into mule-account or task-based scams. Some adults also use professional-sounding approaches as a pretext to build one-to-one contact with a young person.
Profile visibility
Location: Settings > Visibility > Profile viewing options
Set to: Limit public visibility
Reduces how much of a young person's profile strangers and search engines can see.
Who can message you
Location: Settings > Communications > Who can reach you
Set to: Connections only / restrict InMail
Cuts down unsolicited messages from recruiters and strangers.
Contact and personal info
Location: Edit profile > Contact info
Set to: Omit phone, address, personal email
Keeps directly identifying and contactable details off a public profile.
Explain that unsolicited job or recruiter messages are a common scam channel
Time: 10 minutes
Agree the rule: never pay a fee, send ID documents, or share bank details to 'get' a job
Time: 5 minutes
Review profile so it doesn't reveal school, home area, phone, or date of birth
Time: 10 minutes
Last reviewed: 2026-07-03