Some of y’all following me were literally born in the 2000s (and no this is not going to be one of those awful 90s kids are better rants) but I know from personal experience that as teenagers, you don’t really understand exactly how young you are. Like I literally babysat kids your age. And I want to remind y’all that I am an adult. And there are lots of adults on this website. And if any adult, even an 18 year old, comes on to you or makes you feel uncomfortable in any way, you are 100% within your rights to report it, and please please please don’t let yourself fall for their lines of “oh you’re very mature for your age” or some shit because I promise you that no matter what, to someone my age, you are a CHILD, and they’re preying on you. Your safety is important, so please exercise caution in all your online interactions
alright i always feel Some Kinda Way whenever i see this post:
im not articulate enough to put all the right words to my feelings, but basically this post’s popularity is concerning because it makes light of the issues that arise from widespread age discrepancies between users in frequent and close communication with one another, and implies that those discrepancies are insignificant and can be overlooked.
tumblr users, especially adult users, absolutely need to be aware of their own age in relation to the age of those in their online social circle. if you’re 27 and would be uncomfortable discussing a particular topic with a 14 year old in person, you shouldn’t be doing it online. don’t send suggestive messages to minors, don’t RP sexual situations with minors, and if an underage person is the one instigating, it is your responsibility as the adult in this situation to stay uninvolved.
when you’re 15, that’s as old as you’ve ever been, so you don’t have the perspective to realize how vastly different high schoolers and 20/30-somethings are, but believe me if a 25 year old on here gets real friendly with you in a way that doesn’t obviously fall into a mentor/older sibling category, it’s a red flag.
aside from excusing shady and possibly predatory behavior, community wide disregard for user-user age differences subjects minors to inappropriately harsh treatment by significantly older users. ive seen well-meaning 14 and 15 year olds get publicly called out, dragged, and humiliated by grown ass adults who deemed a post of theirs problematic in some way. adults should not have the same expectations of children as they do of their actual peers, and children shouldn’t be encouraged by posts like these to see adults as their peers. yes, even when you’re just screaming about cartoons.
eirenical17 