First of all, I don’t mean this post as a complaint, maybe more of a warning?
There is teenagers on the fediverse. Most of them don’t share their age, for hopefully obvious reasons. I’d say that a lot of the accounts which do a lot of posting/commenting are run by teenagers — because most adults probably wouldn’t have the time for that much posting.
While the young people of this generation are generally useless when it comes to something more complicated than microsoft word, the people who are good at technology, usually are very good at it.
most of my friends (most of which don’t know the difference between a laptop and a desktop) could understand the fediverse as a concept perfectly when I explained it to them irl.
So, if you’re in a really stupid argument with someone, try to remember that there is a small chance they are 14.
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I was smarter than the rest of you all when I was a teen. It wasn’t until I became an adult did I get this stupid.
Odd post, but checks out
14 going on 40 so it will be some spirited ebeef. No quarter will be given
There are* teenagers
shut up nerd
WHAT!!!??
TEENAGERS??
ONLINE???
Brooo I had no idea… how could this happen? I never would’ve guessed there could be teenagers despite at one point being one and using the internet. I get you’re probably pretty new to being online but like come on, the rest of the world doesn’t discover things at the rate you do…
I am a teenager.
Most people assume fedi has no one under the age of 20.
Get back to r/teenagers, where you belong!
But seriously, thanks for the reminder.
I never would’ve guessed 🙄
Play with fire, get burned.
If you can’t take it, get the fuck out.
It should not be that surprising. Many teenagers are really smart, curious and will find their way here. That said I realise your warning is well intentioned; I hope Lemmy remains a more civil place than Reddit became over the last ten years, for everyone; teenagers included.
Maybe, but I was on the internet as a teen and that went fine, being careful is a general thing in life.
But more importantly: adults have a phone and use it during work ALL the time. So I’m not so sure about the average age of the people commenting on here.
But don’t assume everyone who is very active is a teenagers.
Some of us aren’t ;).
And you don’t have to understand federation to use lemmy. I’ve brought a couple of gen-z ers here. Get them to download voyager. Voyger automatically suggests lemm.ee for account creation. And then you just use it like reddit. Super simple.
I don’t assume all of them are.
Knowing a couple of the most active accounts. None of them are teenagers, in all cases middle aged men.
*Are. Not trying to be a jerk if English isn’t your first language. Teenagers is a plural noun.
English is my first language, I have no excuse.
Listen teens, I’m 40. I was a niteclub bouncer in a town popular with backpackers and partying, I also did a lot of traveling and partying. I was shameless, its a miracle it didnt fall off.
When you say you fucked my mom, its childish and stupid. When I say I fucked your mom while its not likely its possible… and thats worse.
Thats usually said by people in the 9 - 13 age group now.
Surprise, surprise. Some chunk of Reddit annoyances stem from kids running around amok.
Then moderators make many stupid rules to try to increase quality and overmoderation takes hold
In short time it becomes increasingly annoying to browse let alone post to get past the anti teen rules filter. Not to mention all the young hormones commenting some stuff at you like it is school break slander or smh
One can always change instance though so it isn’t doom and gloom. The kids will have Lemmy.world and nice, enjoy it and have fun. It is the club penguin of Lemmy instances. We knew this would happen
I don’t think all, or even most, of the low quality content comes from kids.
Then moderators make many stupid rules to try to increase quality and overmoderation takes hold
This is so true. One of the best decisions I made during my tenure as mod of /r/StarTrek was changing the rules to be spirt-based instead of language-based. People will literally try to lawyer their way around the language of any rule, and it gets exhausting for mods to get drawn into debates when it’s obvious the person is trying to get around the spirit of the community’s purpose.
For example we had a rule that was literally just “be nice” (vs what a lot of communities have which is “don’t be uncivil” followed by a 1000 item list of uncivil things that nobody will read and only exists for mods to point to after the fact). We got a lot of pushback like “who decides what being nice means?” (to which I would reply "if you truly don’t know what ‘nice’ means then you need to ask your mother) but if someone is ““concerned”” about a rule to “be nice” or “honest”, they are probably not someone that needs to be around anyway. It’s a discussion community, not civil society, not everyone has a right to participate.
As you said the beauty of the fediverse is that each instance can have it’s own styles.
Isn’t it wise to do some sort of age check before someone can access the adult subs? If this becomes a trend among teenagers, I can already see parents halting that just because of easy adult access. Pixelfed for instance has parental controls.
i dont do pixelfed, so idk what parental control they have. but what kind of system is gonna stop teens from making an account without their parents knowledge? and no, age verification wont work. there is a mysterious thing happening, where teenagers immediately turn 45 for the duration of any “please enter your age” question on the internet.
A parent can flag an account of their children, that the child has to accept. They would of course do this together sitting next to each other, so the child has no choice but to accept. Then, the parent can control the content the child sees.
Honestly age verification other than ID checks will never work. But to send your ID to the owner of an instance is of a whole other level, that the people who join / have joined and even the instance owners are probably unwilling to accept. And they wouln’t be wrong for that.
sure, that will stop kids from having one account with random access. but the step to alts isnt that hard.
i propose that it will work untill the teens want to see something - then they will quickly create an alt. or they are mischievous like i was and create an alt as soon as the parents leave the room - after all you need to find out what they are hiding…
Lmao, when have age checks worked on any site ever
Well in all honesty: never
Most of us would post on forums as teens back in the day, so it’s hypocritical to try to keep them from doing it too. The only places we should run them off would be communities we specifically make for adults. They don’t necessarily have to be NSFW. Sometimes it’s just nice to have a community where everyone is old enough that they get the same references and are in similar stages in life.
General music and hobby related communities really shouldn’t be blocked off, though.
A friend and I just yesterday talked about that and how we both visited some random sites/communities back then. How we had ICQ Chats with adults as 13-somethings, phone calls, about the blogosphere, how some Internet friends asked whether you needed something and send it on a disc via Mail.
I suppose if I were a teenager again, I would be here too.
I mean, as a teenager, if a community says in the rules that its for adults only, I’d avoid it.
Honestly I think that’s unusual for a teenager
I don’t think so.
Press x to doubt
we would not stop from accessing adult stuff, if we wanted to. so trying to hard prevent them now would be hypocritical too imo. it is our job as parents to prepare them as good as we can.
This is actually a good thing - teenagers are known to bring niche things into popular culture! For some reason the whole of society kind of cares what they think is cool
It’s just so tiring to discuss something like politics with someone who is literally 12.
Most free time, rich teens spending their parents money drive our trends probably , not even probably thats most influencers, like alix earle , its funny af that all the girls ik that repost eat the rich and shit follow her and taylor swift
