and are there risks for children? yes.
here is a fact: kids want to connect to people.
and right now, the only real way to do that, for many, is online.
it's not just the unwalkability of us neighborhoods. it's not just the restrictions by parents on where and how their kids can move.
first of all, offline spaces for kids are few and far between, and when they do exist, kids are often prohibited from accessing them by parents. i wasn't allowed to walk to my local library on my own until i was twelve or thirteen. (to be clear, it was under a mile away, i had the ability to contact them via a smart watch, and i'd been there before.)
and in the us in particular, there often aren't things within walking/biking distance. that library i mentioned was all of one room, was typically unaccessible (open tuesday, thursday and saturday; twenty-one hours a week, with 14 hours and 10 minutes, tops, being actually accessible given the high school hours). glancing around the neighborhood now, i could walk to such exciting places as (checks google maps) a notary, several places to do one's taxes, a gas station, or a paint store. to be fair, there is also a walkable playground, more pizza places than seems possible for a town of that size to support, and a swimming pool, but on days with bad weather (and this is pittsburgh, so a fair number of days) that aren't tuesday and thursday, a kid growing up there, even if allowed, and even if there are sidewalks, wouldn't be able to do much (not without the relentless shadow of consumerism hanging over them at the pizza places, anyway.)
now, let's compare my grandparents' home when i was growing up. glancing around on google maps, it looks like there's even less. seriously, it looks like a soulcrushing dystopia from above. where the fuck is a kid who lives there supposed to go to hang out with friends? walgreens?
meanwhile, for many queer kids, access to online spaces is a lifeline -- literally, sometimes. being able to know you're not alone is incredibly powerful, being able to know that there are words for what you are beyond whatever slurs your parents/society calls you is powerful.
people don't tell the stories of those kids, because it's in no one's interest. the big corporate companies don't want to offend anyone, so they're not going to highlight the story of the queer kid who realized they were queer via social media. and goodness knows the parents aren't going to be publicizing that story.
are there real and valid dangers social media poses? yes. absolutely.
i said this in the tags of another post, and i'm slightly reworking it:
if you're a queer kid in a queerphobic environment, the internet can be incredibly helpful. furthermore, the way these rules work, either only big tech will be able to afford age-gating, or people will migrate to smaller forums and then the lawmakers will panic and extend it over them as well. and I'm younger than some of the big tech companies. I don't remember an era without social media. the first website where I really interacted with other people in a way that wasn't specifically aimed at kids, I was probably twelve, and it was the comments section of a website went down about six months after I joined. it was a tiny community, the posts were infrequent, and it was held together, so far as I can tell, by sheer optimism. I loved it. fuck, I still do. I adored it. it showed me what the internet could be.
yeah, maybe the space wasn't intentional. yeah, maybe it wasn't made for human connection. so what? that's the beauty of those spaces. human communication networks are like dandelions -- they spring up, and, no matter how hard people try to get rid of them, they just. keep. coming. they will grow from a crack in the sidewalk.
and there will always, always, be a crack in the sidewalk.
anyway, as dragon-in-a-fez mentioned somewhere else, enjoy Ageless Linux.
Go forth and break the law, California children!
