Making online friends is so hard lol

As the title says, i feel like making friends is so hard now...

Like, a few years ago, you could just talk to anyone and if it went along well, then you stayed in touch, I was teeny tiny, had to lie about my age on social platforms but my experiences were just fine. My current best friends are online friends, one is a girl 4 years older than me (19) and the other is two years older than me (17).

And nowadays, for some reason, people are so much tense when it comes to friendships, not even just people but society as a whole, between the stronger age restrictions on platform and people out there who are too busy babying anyone a couple hours younger

Obviously I dont blame people, if they're uncomfortable, then its best for them to walk away from the situation, and i dont blame society for "trying to protect children" (im quoting this bc most of the time its just to take away the right to anonymity from people online to control them better) but damn this is boring 

Plus, I genuinely CAN'T get along with people my age, when I try to talk to someone, whether its online or irl, if it feels tense, i immediately know they're my age, but when it goes along well, that's when im realizing that they're sm older that its ridiculous

It's starting to tone down because people my age are finally growing up and less insufferable, and maybe because I dont struggle as much to talk to people in general, but just a couple years ago I literally had NO real friends my age, just people i got along well with enough to do group work at school

Like, during summer break I was really bored and went online to these websites where you're linked to random people and chitchat, and after bunch of trolls and hungry freak, i finally found someone with who I've been able to discuss sm things in a respectful and fun way, plus the person came from another country so it was nice discussing the difference between where they lived and where i lived

Obviously i already guesses their age range, at least a couple years older, and I couldn't care less, because when you're a normal person with no wicked thoughts, you can easily keep a friendship with an age gap without it being weird or harmful to anyone, but atp (I think it was a day after...?)  the person suggest we share our age, and im like why not, turns out they were 18! (what a surprise, really...)

30 mins later and i receive this long paragraph about how it was nice talking to me but they couldn't keep talking to me, how as someone who wanted to become a teacher it felt wrong, and that it might seem normal to me to talk to people so older than me but i might change opinions later, that it was purely platonic, still wishing me a happy early bd (it was a week before my birthday) and that i could maybe talk to them when I'll turn 18.

Of course i wasn't gonna force a friendship so i just told them that if they felt better that way then okay and just thanked them for the bd wish, and i go back to that website because im bored and before starting the conversation i ask them first if theyre okay talking to a minor, literally everyone turns me down, and those p€do baiters keep asking me why am i telling that online, maybe cus i dont wanna have someone else walk out mid convo because of my age, ;-;? Like im not desperate for friends, if i feel like someone is weird I'll just leave the conversation like any rational person, its not that deep

Since i was younger, everytime something felt weird id just leave or talk about it to someone older (mom, sis...) and i turned out just fine

Plus during the pandemic everyone online were teenagers up to older people, and they were making friends just fine, so why now that i've reached that age, i cant? Like, the only generation of people i go along with are becoming legal adults, but I'm not the plague for being 15, damn