i think some of you guys are insane 👍 it's actually possible for a 16 year old to be online friends with someone in their 20s. source: teenagers are actually people who can talk to other people about shared interests.
21 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 that 18 year old is literally your college classmate. you are the same age. You Are The Same Age
like, the moral panic about age gaps in dating is one thing but this reddit thread was literally about Being Online Friends. you can be online friends with a teenager. they are actually people you can talk to. i promise.
it's very easy to not be a creepy adult when talking to a minor. step one: don't act creepy. that's it. that's all you need to do.
When I was sixteen, I and my boyfriend (eighteen) and his little brother (fourteen) all belonged to the same gaming group, which had been started by his father's friend Steve. We played twice a week with a bunch of people twice and even three times our age, and we learned that adults weren't aliens, they were people with their own feelings and fears and they weren't always right about everything.
Those years at Steve's table were incredibly important to my development as a person. And we had something in common: the game.
Here's the truth: when you grow up, as you go through the various developmental stages, there are things which are vital to happen for proper psychological and cognitive development. For example, when you're very young it is absolutely vital that you are exposed to language. A lot of language. Of varying levels of complexity and formality. That's vital for the healthy development of the language centers of the brain and for early socializing. It must happen. If it does not, you see severe dysfunction as they get older.
This is basic psychological and cognitive development theory. It's taught in pretty basic level Psych courses. This is known science.
Socializing with adults, of various ages, both related to you and not related to you, in various social situations from social equals to authority figure, is one of those vital landmarks. And it comes up over and over and over during development. As a young child you must interact with adults, who care for you, so you can understand care and safety. And it gets more deep and more complicated as you develop.
Preteens and teens must interact with people older than them, significantly older, in various ways, up to and including casual friendly socializing as equals, or they will not develop properly. This is absolutely vital. Your ability to function in the real world socially depends on it.
We are fucking destroying our young people with this bullshit.
Source: Majored in Psychology with a focus on childhood development in university. This is what I went to school for.
I'd like to point out that those stages of development and crucial periods of interaction don't stop at some magical arbitrary definition of adulthood. Young adults, middle aged adults and senor adults, need to have interaction with children and teens and people who are younger than they are or they lose their grip on reality and ability to communicate with people who don't share their privileges and abilities. Source: can you fucking hear yourself?
The deliberate dismantling of intergenerational society by capitalism is one of the most damaging things to happen in the 20th century.
Humans evolved with alloparenting. You are supposed to have meaningful relationships (friendship, mentorship, tutelage) with extraparental adults and older kids.
Also just to talk on the very simple level the original thing is operating on- Teenagers being friends with adults protects them from grooming. Why? Because then they know what a normal adult acts like. PLUS having an adult that ISNT an authority figure they could go to for help if needed? glorious. a lot of teens are in a stage of development where they're realizing that authority is dangerous. and it is! but it also makes them wary of asking for help from authority, even if it wouldnt be a problem, because they are learning. This is in ADDITION to everything else mentioned in this post.