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.

    • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
      0·
      22 days ago

      At 14, me and most of my peers could navigate a file system on DOS, format floppies, install games from setup disks, and edit autoexec.bat files.

      Yes, there is a huge difference between the teens of today and the teens of 25 years ago. Technological illiteracy is real thanks to the iPhone era and UIs becoming stupid simple to use.

      The “iPad kids” meme didn’t originate from thin air.

      • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldEnglish
        0·
        22 days ago

        Congrats, you lived in a social bubble. As we all do. Your sounds fun, so cherish the memories and don’t pretend your experience is universal.

      • SupraMario@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        22 days ago

        I blame gen x and millennials…we made shit easy from the hard shit we built/had…and once everything was a button press the new generations went all Idiocracy.

      • TORFdot0@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        22 days ago

        There’s kids today that still do that. And plenty of kids that’s call you a virgin and stuff you in a locker for being able to use a computer without a gui

    • TheFogan@programming.devEnglish
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      22 days ago

      Huge variations. I’d say probably the technologically literate percentages of people is about the same… but tech has allowed the technologically illiterate the ability to use the internet.

    • throwaway@lemmy.cafeOPEnglish
      0·
      22 days ago

      They are, teenagers (saying this as a teenager) are hopeless. Tech became so easy to use that anything requiring a tiny bit of effort is impossible for these people.

      • Sanctus@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        22 days ago

        Its the same as its always been. There was always a small subset of the population interested and developing computer sciences. There was never this time where all the youngins knew computers like they did breathing. That was a fallacy.

  • Lemminary@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    21 days ago

    Some are easy to spot because they don’t understand that being apologetic has little to do with apologizing, for example. 😅

  • net00@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    22 days ago

    I’m actually surprised that a few lemmy instances allow minors to sign up. I don’t get it. It’s always a liability and platforms tend to become dystopian in the name of “protecting the children” and to comply with additional laws and requirements…

    Honestly I’m now thinking of migrating from lemm.ee now that I learned of it allowing minors, this instance could turn into shit because of it. Example: “we’ll defederate from any mature instance because the kids can’t see boob”

    • yunxiaoli@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      22 days ago

      Minors are going to access the internet no matter what you do, it’s on them an their underdeveloped brains on whether or not they can handle it.

      If their parents don’t care enough, then let them be raised here, amongst the stable minds that think anything to the left of burning kids alive for warmth is tankieism (.world) or anything to the right of luxury gay space communism is fascism (all the sane instances).

    • Microw@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      22 days ago

      Lemm.ee allows minors out of the same school of thought why it allows federation with nearly all instances there are, including NSFW: liberalism (as in: freedom)

  • recall519@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    21 days ago

    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.

    • SirQuack@feddit.nlEnglish
      0·
      20 days ago

      Hey, fuck you for calling adults stupid. Some of us have been stupid the whole time! Edit: /s

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        21 days ago

        No, we’ve definitely gotten dumber as time has gone on. Especially socially; interpersonal skills have basically vanished since I was in high school.

  • Kane@femboys.bizEnglish
    0·
    21 days ago

    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.

  • weremacaque@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    22 days ago

    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.

    • nodiratime@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      22 days ago

      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.

    • throwaway@lemmy.cafeOPEnglish
      0·
      22 days ago

      I mean, as a teenager, if a community says in the rules that its for adults only, I’d avoid it.

    • ToxicWaste@lemm.eeEnglish
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      22 days ago

      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.

  • Condiment2085@lemm.eeEnglish
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    22 days ago

    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

    • Dil@is.hardlywork.ingEnglish
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      22 days ago

      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

    • Kusimulkku@lemm.eeEnglish
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      21 days ago

      It’s just so tiring to discuss something like politics with someone who is literally 12.

      • Lemminary@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        21 days ago

        I agree. Discussing politics should require some form of age verification! Reading the myopic takes are enough torture on their own, let alone having to contend with them.

        (Yes, this is hyperbole. If y’all come for me I’ll laugh really hard at you.)

  • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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    22 days ago

    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.

    • TORFdot0@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      22 days ago

      You are either a 14 year old socialist furry or a 35 year old Linux user on the fedi. No in between

    • shikitohno@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      22 days ago

      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.

      • CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        22 days ago

        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.

    • Saleh@feddit.orgEnglish
      0·
      22 days ago

      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.

  • satans_methpipe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    21 days ago

    While the young people of this generation are generally useless when it comes to something more complicated than microsoft word

    Generalizations and eager bootlicking of generational propaganda isn’t helpful at all.