Also, I know the Internet will never again be the virtual Wild West it was when I was a teen, but… personally, for me, having a place where I could find ANYTHING when I was an older teen was actually important. I spent a good bit of my older teenagerdom bedridden, living in hospital settings, etc.
If I hadn’t had a place where I knew how to find weird shit and the adults around me didn’t know enough to know what I was doing, I would have lost my goddamn mind.
I’m not saying none of the changes have been positive, I’m just saying… kids do grow up, and part of growing up for many people is seeking out media that people have hidden from you.
I worry that antiism makes that part of gaining independence unnecessarily harder than it should be.
this post is a big mood tbh
I found the internet when I was 8? 9? weird isolate kid learning to read fanfic and reading a lot of gross definitely not meant for kids stuff, also playing club penguin and candy crush and what the fuck else. Wikipedia runs. stuff like that saved my life. access to information saved my life–not because I found information that was crucial to my survival but because I was clever and lonely and overwhelmed and understimulated and I needed something to hold on to. access to knowledge saved me.
and the internet, despite being occasionally terrible, has continued to save me. it’s anonymous. here, I don’t have to answer to adults. I can read fanfic and explore my sexuality and access information and write and talk to people and I’ve never known the internet as anything other that it is now, I’ve always been post-facebook, and the internet still saved me.
and that’s a huge part of why antism makes me so fucking angry–not only are they trying to police what adults do in their own time, they’re actively hurting teens like me. access to creativity and community saves queer and neurodivergent lives. access to spaces without judgements saves lives. you know what hurts people, especially kids? making us feel like we’re wrong for normal human emotions. get your purity culture out of my face, you’re killing people. if you got your hands on me when I was 11, 12, 13, just finding names for things I’d felt all my life, you’d have killed me. I wish I was joking.
it’s never okay to shame children’s sexualities. it’s never okay to bully kids for being different.
antis are hurting children just as much as they’re hurting adults. do not let them forget that.
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the1timetraveller 