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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Play with fire, get burned.
If you can’t take it, get the fuck out.
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
Then 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 defederate though so it isn’t doom and gloom. The kids will have Lemmy.world and nice, enjoy it and have fun
*Are. Not trying to be a jerk if English isn’t your first language. Teenagers is a plural noun.
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.
Odd post, but checks out
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There are* teenagers
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
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
WARNING To the People of Earth: Teenagers exist. BEWARE
Pretty much yeah, most people assume that no one under 30 is on fedi because its “hard” to use.
Is this the popular assumption?
I’m 19 and assumed that there are at least a few. And with that I’m correct.
You are.
18 here started when I was 17
I’m 24 and I’m using it just fine. I’d say that after signing up somewhere and getting an app to login into, the rest is pretty simple and much similar to reddit
With lemmy? definitely! On the mastodon side of things? no. Mastodon seems to be for german middle aged bikers now.
Oh boy, I should get on Mastodon!
You should also check sharkey! calckey.world
Well, I don’t know. Mastodon seems fine to me too
How is Mastodon harder? (Legit question, not snark)
There is more missing replies/reactions, and picking an instance is a bit harder imo. Also search is completely broken.
The assumptions that people make about age boggle my mind. You know that the people who made the internet are all “old” now, right?
Yeah, though most people severely underestimate, or overestimate the internets age.
Honestly as an older person it very much feels like a lot of Lemmy is under 25. It’s the little things like not understanding the historical context that something from the past fits in while simultaneously telling me Im wrong about the time that I lived through.
Assuming someone to develop a sufficient consciousness of their time starting with age 10 that would mean anything before 2010.
In all practical matter, people who are 25 now, cannot have any practical recollection of the US invasion of Iraq and are only having broad ideas of the 2007 financial crisis.
That is indeed scary.
It’s the little things like not understanding the historical context that something from the past fits in while simultaneously telling me Im wrong about the time that I lived through.
In fairness, that’s not necessarily a sign of them being young, but could be any number of things at play. I’ve had my grandmother literally tell me not to tell hew how things were during World War II, because she lived through it, when we were talking about well documented actions of major historical figures that she was confidently incorrect about. No amount of documentation about what Churchill, Stalin or Hitler did during a particular event could change her mind, because she lived through it, never mind the fact that she was like 10 at the time. /r/AskHistorians had a 20 year moratorium on discussing recent events for a reason. Then again, this is the same lady who left her church of decades, because she was sure she was better at interpreting the Bible and church doctrine than all the priests who spent years studying those topics in seminary, since she occasionally read random books of the Bible and was older than they were.
It could also just be peoples’ biases at play. A Marxist historian and a fundamentalist, conservative Christian historian will come to wildly different conclusions and interpretations of things like the significance and impact of the rise of the religious right in the US under figures like Ronald Reagan, despite looking at the very same events.
And it could always just be that people are essentially engaging in drive-by posting quite often on the internet. For all the good things it can bring us, and the sense of community that it often provides, I think that internet “communities” really just provide us with a close approximation of community, while fundamentally lacking key elements that help real communities to exist and function in the long term. Personally, I’m closer to the Democratic moderates/centrists that abound on Lemmy.world than I am to my coworkers or my parents politically, yet I find that political discussions here tend to lose all civility and sincerity much quicker than they do with my boss who is all gung-ho for MAGA in real life. Like, I actually got my boss to come around on things like taxing the rich and universal healthcare when I had a chance to explain them without the hysterical stuff Fox tosses out and with examples of how they would actually benefit him to have as a baseline during election season last year, and it was a more civil and less heated conversation than some of those I had here a few months prior about whether Harris was really a good pick when the Democrats announced her as their candidate last year.
I think a lot of the loss of civility comes from the fact that lemmy is just so left leaning. I don’t feel the need hear to defend the dems because I know that 90% of the users here understand that the dems are in fact at least marginally better than the other choice. IRL I run dem apologia on occasion because I might not like what they are doing but at least they pretend to care.
You are either a 14 year old socialist furry or a 35 year old Linux user on the fedi. No in between
I am a 30 year old socialist furry Linux user on the fedi. But that’s just the exception that proves the rule.
Ooof well older than that Sonny…
Sometimes much older
I wish I was 35. 2009 was still somehow a better year
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.
Lmao, when have age checks worked on any site ever
Well in all honesty: never
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.
As a teenager who is relatively tech-savvy and on the fediverse, can confirm. I think it’s gotten to the point where even less technically inclined people can join fairly easily, but the more savvy are usually the first to flee from enshittifying platforms so we see a lot more of them here.
https://lemmy.cafe/post/14200034
Be careful admitting that.
Teenager ≠ underage, 18 and 19 year olds exist. But thanks for your concern. :)
Teenagers now get banned if they tell their age anyway: !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
To any teens who come across this post, do NOT admit you’re underage or were underage at time of account creation anywhere, anytime for any reason
It’s like Rule 1 of the internet.
Sincerely, The kids who grew alongside the internet since the 90s
I was totally above 13 or had parental consent when I went to forums in the early 2000s. I totally wasn’t actually 9.
It’s wild to me this concept disappeared? It’s literally never been a good idea to reveal you’re a minor online. The laws are against you. Companies don’t want to deal with a curated minor experience, even less so in the current times. If they do, you get the crappier version of things.
The worst thing to happen to the Internet is when Facebook normalized using your real name and real info online.
I agree. The main thing is teenagers wanting to discuss stuff about them, like on r/teenagers on reddit.
If it’s anything like Reddit, it would devolve into being mostly creepy adults.
Back in the days we’d get free hosting and slap phpBB on it. Run for kids by kids, no pesky adult rules!
Those were the days. No credit cards needed, no nothing, just free 50MB of Apache/MySQL/PHP4 hosting with no strings attached.
If the fediverse was a thing I’d probably have had my own instance starting age 14-15ish.
Its a shame that all “modern” forum softwares are really resource heavy.
Duh, I was born in 1901, why do you ask?
On my main account (this is a throwaway, if the username didn’t already suggest that) I’m sure if you dug around enough you’d find out my age, but it would be a lot of effort.
I was -1 years old when creating this account🚬
Believe it or not BAN
Even if the instance doesn’t have any rules about it?
That is not Fediverse specific. That’s general internet behaviour.
even gen a probably knows that, but those that dont, they will find out the hard way
And what’s the problem with that?
Laws don’t currently make a concession for federated social media. If the law in an instance’s jurisdiction says that users on a platform must be of a certain age, then for practical/enforcement purposes it makes no difference if they’re local or federated.
FWIW, I also ban people under age 18 on my instance (local and federated). Obviously I can’t know everyone’s age, but if someone offers it and I become aware, and it’s below the minimum age set in our policy, then they’re banned until they’re of age - simple as that.
I’m in the US, so 13 is the minimum age by law for most services (COPPA), and there’s various grumblings to increase the age specifically for social media, so I’m playing it safe with 18 which is the age you’re legally considered an adult.
Considering some of the stuff that gets posted here (legitimately and via bad actors), then my legal liabilities are less as I’m going out of my way to only serve adults on the platform. Mind you, I’m running this as a hobby / volunteer and do not have a team of lawyers on hand.
Lemm.ee goes with 16, as does Blahaj.
The case linked was kind of an edge case as that user is turning 18 in a few months.
Where does .ee say they only allow 16+? couldn’t find it myself.
Our site, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 16 years old. If you are under the age of 16, per the requirements of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) do not use this site.
Quoth Article 8:
- Where point (a) of Article 6(1) applies, in relation to the offer of information society services directly to a child, the processing of the personal data of a child shall be lawful where the child is at least 16 years old.
Where the child is below the age of 16 years, such processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that consent is given or authorised by the holder of parental responsibility over the child.
Member States may provide by law for a lower age for those purposes provided that such lower age is not below 13 years. - The controller shall make reasonable efforts to verify in such cases that consent is given or authorised by the holder of parental responsibility over the child, taking into consideration available technology.
- Paragraph 1 shall not affect the general contract law of Member States such as the rules on the validity, formation or effect of a contract in relation to a child.
The referenced point (a) is in the conditions for data processing to be lawful:
the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes;
In essence: The age of consent is 16 when it comes to your personal data. A completely different question is whether lemm.ee even processes personal data, even more so in a matter that requires consent. Because unless you doxx yourself lemm.ee knows nothing more about you than your IP and, presuming best practices, only keeps limited logs around for strictly technical purposes which don’t need consent. That point (a) is only one condition under which personal data can be processed, there’s also b, c, d, e, and f.
…not that I’m saying that the legal notice is bad it’s good. It’s overzealous and overcautious going beyond the letter of the law and event intent, reaching into the fabled realms of actually giving a fuck. Like, if the law says “assault is bad” then this notice is saying “please all cuddle, ok?”
- Where point (a) of Article 6(1) applies, in relation to the offer of information society services directly to a child, the processing of the personal data of a child shall be lawful where the child is at least 16 years old.
From a bit of clicking around, its linked no-where but the footer, so if you’re making an account they don’t tell you to read it. Easy to miss.
Meh. At least pretending to be an adult feels like a pretty low bar.
Thats why I made this post. If a teenager is on the fediverse, they will know how to evade a ban.
Makes sense!
