what happened to spaces for teens and kids on the internet?

i saw another post about this, so i decided to give my thoughts on the matter

i don't know if any of you have ever heard this saying, but i think it reigns true in some way. "teenagers know something that children don't know, and adults forget."

the overwhelming hate towards teenagers and children on the internet has gone way too far. people will hate on anyone for liking anything.

before i get into the bulk of this: if you are under the age of 13 and are reading this post, please delete your account. you are actively violating spacehey's TOS. if you reveal your age to be under 13 at any point, you are most likely going to get banned. so don't say i didn't warn you.

with the overwhelming presence of children online, has come loads of discourse about the matter. and lots of hate at that. people hate on others simply for expressing who they are. so that begs the question, "what happened to letting kids be kids?" childhood has changed dramatically throughout generations. children are more likely to stay inside on an iPad watching mind-rotting videos instead of using their imaginations or physical toys. i think screens can be good when used in moderation. (more on that another day)

kids can't seem to do anything without adults hating on them. did adults really forget that they were there once? the only thing that saves them is that most of their online activity is deleted. (or extremely hard to find) think of myspace for example, myspace is almost impossible to find anything on. if you do find anything, it's probably broken or incomplete. many early 2000s-era websites have either shut down (e.g. friendster) or have had videos become archived or hidden. (e.g. youtube) when it comes to the more obscure websites (various forum pages) that have been deleted, we have no idea what these people were like. and they were most likely just as bad (or worse) than the children of today. i will give them the benefit of the doubt in saying that most of the audience of myspace (and other social media websites of the time) was more teen-oriented than anything. (from my research) but there is really no way to have a fair comparison between the two time periods. because as social media has progressed, it has become more diverse age wise.

there seem to be no more (children or teen) oriented spaces online or in real life anymore. as the millennial generation grew up, so did social media. so places that were primarily whimsical, were left for places that cater to more adult audiences. the example that comes to mind for me is twitter. (i don't care if it's called x now.) twitter has historically had an older age demographic. and it has also been one of the most popular social media platforms for a while. so when kids go on to that website, they see adults talking about their adult problems. they try to relate to those things. adults also talk about what they don't like about the current generation of children at the time. ages 18-24 use the internet more often than any other age group, and it has been that way for a while. and the internet caters to who uses it the most. so when that happens to be adults, we get this outcome. another part is the fact that the millennials pretty much built the internet. the internet was still in it's infancy in the 2000s. so the millennials played a key part in making the internet in to what it is. so as they changed, so did what they created.

so, why does the previous generation "bully" the new generation. from what i've concluded, it's because they were surrounded by more people their age. the internet was the cool "hip" thing for all the young people to use. (that at the time being millennials) but now, everyone and their grandma uses the internet. so with the diverse nature of the internet now, grown people who have already gone through the idiocy of being young, can comment on others' idiocy.

the gist of what i'm saying is, when the people who made all these things grow, the things for the younger people get left behind. (and possibly shut down) i feel if there was a space more dedicated to teens, then it would fix a lot of the bullying that is going on from the previous generation. because nobody can relate to you better than someone from the same walk of life. 

this was a long post to make and i worry that it won't make any sense when you read it. but i hope that you can understand what i mean behind this. <3