When you buy a car in the US, there's an entire industry of psuedo-scammers that scrapes the new vehicle registration data and will send you letters soliciting you to buy a "warranty" with horrible terms and pricing, which are intentionally crafted to look like they come from the dealership, manufacturer, or a more reputable insurance company. This is just one example, the only silver lining is that junk mail has existed for long enough that even most senior citizens understand that they need to be skeptical of anything they receive.
SMS and Email is a constant adversarial game where you will be inundated with scams, advertising, political solicitations, and all other manner of noise as you try to combat it with spam filters, blocklists, hidemyemail, burner addresses all the while hoping you don't miss an important communication from someone you actually care about.
As for phones, scam calls and telemarketing has gotten so bad that most people will not answer a call from an unknown number unless they're expecting to hear from someone (e.g. doctor, mechanic). But lots of older people still hold onto the unfortunately outdated cultural norm that you always pick up the phone when it rings, and that's one of the most common attack vectors for scamming the elderly.
I think it's critical that people understand that it does NOT have to be like this. The US has a business regulatory regime that biases towards letting an entity get away with pretty much anything, and alternatives exist even among capitalist countries.