@danirabbit there is a story of cultural theory I've had in my head since my early 20s, which I've been slowly evolving. We keep going people siloed into artificial groups of all one age bracket until they're 18, and often until their early 20s if they attend higher education. It's unnatural, and it's an artificial situation that they will never encounter again the rest of their lives.

As a result, because they are shut off away from their parent's culture they develop their own. Which is why every generation has their own music, fashion, and even language. It also makes parent's feel alienated from their kids and vice versa. Then these young people are thrust out into the real world, and they never experience such an environment again.

I had the misfortune of being labeled "gifted" while not getting the actual diagnosis that really applies (autistic). Instead of letting "gifted" kids move at their own accelerated pace we generally keep them in the same group with their "peers" because if we put them in with older kids they would feel alienated. That's the theory. Fuck, I was already alienated. Then I had to wait around and try to occupy my brain while the other kids caught up. That just made me feel even less party of the group. If the internet had been a thing back then it might have really helped my mental health.

I'm rambling a bit. I could do the subject s lot more justice long-form, and I've been thinking about doing just that when time permits. Suffice to say, I think a lot of society's ills stem from generational divide. Locking kids away from online life will absolutely make that worse.

@danirabbit
There won’t be anywhere left to go.

This, the social media bans that is, carry the same sickening energy as when restaurants employ ”teenage repulsers” or whatever you can call them. Those devices that play high frequency sounds that only children and teenagers can hear to ward them off public spaces.

Then youngsters started going online to express themselves and to build their own opinions. And now, nope, let’s set up age restrictions to *protect* the children. This is, in my opinion, like putting a bird in a cage to *protect* it, while it just wanted to fly free.

I might be preaching to the choir but I’m expressing my right to free speech. It seems like it’s going to be increasingly important for us to do that, if I’ve read the signs right. I hope that I have not.

@danirabbit Some locals and I, as well as several other allied groups, are providing local young people private group access to physical spaces (with their choice of how to characterize the gathering internally and externally), their choice of banned books in print or DRM-free ebooks and audiobooks (hence those compatible with surveillance- and censorship-free apps), their choice of protest music on CD (with use of USB optical drives), their choice of outdoor activity gear (with their choice of coaching), their choice of how to convert one of our elders’ lawns into a permaculture garden, or their choice of art, craft, textile, cullinary, woodwork, electronics, or mechanical supplies (with their choice of volunteer expert guidance).

Outwardly, they may be going to a study group or tutoring session or whatever else they need to call it to keep various controlling people off their backs. Behind closed doors, they may be reading and discussing every book their local school board and library board has taken off the shelves, linking their local banned book club via video with another one in a neighbouring community whose demographics make them targets of locals’ bigotry, sharing in and dancing to each other’s protest music, modding thrifted clothes into body-pluralistic defiance fashion possibly with outer layers to camouflage when expedient, or working with an engineer, a mechanic, and an electrician to convert a pre-enshittification era ICE car into a BEV.

I’m not one of the facilitating older folks with a bunch of unneeded space or free time or saved money to share, but it only takes one or two in the community network to provide them that (or a few more, if groups have markedly different preferred activities). What I bring is experience cat herding and expertise providing and instructing in use of secure and private communications, and decades of studying underground resistance movements. Others bring skills as counsellors or social workers. Others bring expertise in activities the young people choose to do in the private spaces the few well-off community network members donate use of. Others design the public-facing front (such as the study group or volunteering organization website and social media), to let those escaping coercive control conceal what they’re doing.

Organize. Whatever the fash try to deny them, provide. Then step back as much as you can while keeping everyone safe, allow them their privacy, facilitate their autonomy, and follow their lead when they need guidance or support.

@danirabbit and that question is one that no parent wants to have to ask about their child.

When there's no obvious place to exercise an interest in a healthy way, it'll be done in a sketchy place in an unhealthy way.