Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.

Hope moves fast, and speed is what makes it easy to exploit. When you badly want something to be true you do less checking, and whoever is offering it can skip the part where they prove it. That is less a flaw in the young than a property of wanting, which is why the same shape of promise still works at sixty.

The safeguard is not to hope less but to slow the yes. When an opportunity, a person, or a plan produces instant certainty, put a week between the feeling and the commitment. Real things survive a week; most of what would have deceived you does not.