about children online

just because of the recent talk about children being here, i have been thinking about this topic as a whole, just trying to collect my thoughts. especially since i have been reading about a certain parenting 'influencers' and how certain stuff can affect kids. i am not gonna name the names here but one of their younger daughters is 13 and stories about her and how she was treated made me think.

just so you know, this isn't some callout or statement or provocation. i know people like to go around harassing anyone slightly complaining about children here, i promise you it isn't one of those posts. i'm writing a diary. maybe if i make this post long enough, bad agents won't care to read it all? anyway...

i have been thinking a lot about the sentiment akin to 'don't complain about teens online, you were doing the same at their age'.  it made me think because yes, i have been active on old polish forums and IRC channels astonishingly early (and went under the radar because of high rhetorical skills for my age). so why do i even care, why am i concerned? am i being a hypocrite? the thing is, at the core of my concern there is worry, maybe compassion? now, i am not a parent. i 'could' be, i'm nearing 22 in february, but i don't really plan to. but i went through growing up online, and how badly it affected me. being groomed online, accused of being manipulative by adults while i was 12... there are some things i really, really don't want kids to go through.

out of two places online with a high number of underage users, one would be spacehey (which really suprised me) and a certain dressup game i was hyperfixated on for a while. quite often i felt forced to interact with kids because of typical in-game transaction things. they would also come to me for advice, which i was really not comfortable with. a kid tried desperately to convince their friend that a man talking to her on instagram wasn't being appropriate. i was really worried, so i tried to explain things about power imbalance, grooming and extortion as much as i could.

it's always so shocking from a perspective of an adult seeing so many kids going through so much and at the same time thinking they are already so mature. so many things seem so 'final' in their world. i quite often see that by the callout posts people get. i read about all these allegedly horrible things, all the relationship drama documented neatly and then turn around to read that the evil perpetrator is 13 and that they apparently don't deserve to have anyone contacting them because of relationship drama. how can a child like this be 'evil' and 'irredeemable'? an 'abuser'? i was called manipulative when i was 14 by an adult man trying to court me. all because i didn't know how to navigate relationships and because i was 'leading him on'.

now, it's no secret that not everyone is fit to be a mentor, a parent, a teacher. quite often, adults online have to assume these kinds of roles to assure kids and teen's safety, to establish boundaries. i think that's why so many people have 'minors dni' on their page, not necessarily because there is any mature content involved, but because of the responsibility. and if you are a kid and reading this, yes, we are responsible for you. i know how adults online affected me during my adolescence. how much i had to unlearn or heal from after unfortunate encounters, malicious or not. children's brains are in the prime of their development. i think that it can be scary, or just a lot of weight on a person's shoulders to always keep that in mind. be an example.

while i do want the best for kids online, i know i can't be a good example often. i have a younger sister, a teen. she saw me struggle with my own problems, reasons why i couldn't always be there to teach her things. i am good with research, with information-based advice, but i am not fit to reliably teach it. you know how content is often inappropriate for kids? well, we are the content now. i have seen someone say that it's better for kids here than on tiktok or twitter. but is it really? i look around and see callouts, harmful ideologies, drama, content that doesn't get deleted fast enough because of lack of resources. the format might be different, but the dangers are still the same.

best solution would be to promote critical analysis of what children might find here, but that requires their willingness to learn. sadly, more often than not they'd rather be left to their own devices. in turn, adults should never acknowledge them (for example, with complaining or worry). kind of easy to see why adults would like a space of their own, now that every social media has become a melting pot of demographics. but kids do not have any safe space too. the thing is, it would need adult supervision. i can easily see how micro-communities of children on social media become harmful and toxic for kids themselves. without any guidance, we have stuff like the callouts or bullying going rampant.

in the ideal world, every parent would be well educated in pedagogical field. in the ideal world, we would have more teachers, tutors, mentors, moderators. in the ideal world, adults online wouldn't have to always be on their best behaviour, because they would have their own spaces. in the ideal world, kids would be provided with guidance and safe spaces. right now, we have adults being deemed childish, and children desperately screaming how mature they are. it's obvious that the complete separation of demographics isn't the best solution for the future of all the kids on the internet, but this is exacly where the trend is going right now.

right now, i don't really have a conclusion or solution. best i can do is to exercise empathy for all parties involved and examine my feelings on the matter. which is hard, and i wish i could let loose, alas. this website is 13+.