this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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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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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 minutes 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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 hour 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (2 children)

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

In short time 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 change instance though so it isn’t doom and gloom. The kids will have Lemmy.world and nice, enjoy it and have fun. It is the club penguin of Lemmy instances. We knew this would happen

[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 minutes ago* (last edited 23 minutes ago)

Then moderators make many stupid rules to try to increase quality and overmoderation takes hold

This is so true. One of the best decisions I made during my tenure as mod of /r/StarTrek was changing the rules to be spirt-based instead of language-based. People will literally try to lawyer their way around the language of any rule, and it gets exhausting for mods to get drawn into debates when it's obvious the person is trying to get around the spirit of the community's purpose.

For example we had a rule that was literally just "be nice" (vs what a lot of communities have which is "don't be uncivil" followed by a 1000 item list of uncivil things that nobody will read and only exists for mods to point to after the fact). We got a lot of pushback like "who decides what being nice means?" (to which I would reply "if you truly don't know what 'nice' means then you need to ask your mother) but if someone is ""concerned"" about a rule to "be nice" or "honest", they are probably not someone that needs to be around anyway. It's a discussion community, not civil society, not everyone has a right to participate.

As you said the beauty of the fediverse is that each instance can have it's own styles.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

I don't think all, or even most, of the low quality content comes from kids.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

*Are. Not trying to be a jerk if English isn't your first language. Teenagers is a plural noun.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

English is my first language, I have no excuse.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago

Odd post, but checks out

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I don't assume all of them are.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Knowing a couple of the most active accounts. None of them are teenagers, in all cases middle aged men.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago

Thats usually said by people in the 9 - 13 age group now.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 hours ago

Play with fire, get burned.

If you can't take it, get the fuck out.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Honestly I think that's unusual for a teenager

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

I don't think so.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago

Press x to doubt

[–] [email protected] 9 points 13 hours ago

14 going on 40 so it will be some spirited ebeef. No quarter will be given

[–] [email protected] 35 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours 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

[–] [email protected] 136 points 1 day ago (23 children)

WARNING To the People of Earth: Teenagers exist. BEWARE

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago

I actually do appreciate this reminder

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 25 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 21 hours ago (4 children)

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

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