I Miss Online Social Spaces
As I see news that the Canadian Liberal Party is wanting to adopt a restriction for social media until you're 16 and with mandatory age verification, I'm reflecting that in this day and age there's so little spaces for teens to be on. Not that I wasn't on social media myself; I had a tumblr, FaceBook, and deviantART from when I was 13 ... but I also had Club Penguin, and Webkinz that I used before that.
On deviantART and tumblr, I learned about the world outside of me. Fandoms, interests, queer relationships through fictional characters, identities, sexualities. It was one of my old online friends that introduced me to the concept of being ace, and over the years I realized I am ace too. Facebook ... well, back then it was just for keeping up with my IRL classmates and family, but we shared pictures of events, and so on.
On Webkinz and Club Penguin, I had a space I know I could get on, play games, talk to others that I know is a safe area just for kids and teens having fun.
I don't know where that exists today.
It's just disheartening knowing that the youth of today have very little places to be themselves. Going outside on your own sounds like a long-gone dream with parents thinking you're going to be kidnapped for going 5 minutes away from home, places for play feel far and few between for kids to just exist (I'm glad we have a park nearby that's a playground as well), and the internet is becoming actively more hostile and removing safe queer spaces for kids and teens to learn, and be in safer environments, as well as scraping data and ID information they can readily resell, or have leaked because of breaches.
I'm not saying social media isn't safe, there's a lot of dark, grimy shit no one should be exposed to, even adults, but I think there's more harm in removing spaces for teens and kids to find people who genuinely are like them, or can help expand their views and horizons.
Why punish children for what the social media integrates into their own sites (algorithms, addictive traits)?
It will not hold anyone back from finding ways to get online.
Maybe we'll just veer back to forum and indie web days. And many VPN subscriptions lol.