When I was a teenager I made an irc channel so I could talk about sex and be horny and ask questions and it had some older friends from the network and honestly I think it was incredibly good for my sexual development even though it involved some amount of me flirting with people who were outside of what I would now consider an acceptable age range for it. Like I think that being open about sex and having safe spaces for teens to experiment and learn and talk about sex is really important.
I dunno like. Looking back on it I'm kind of uncomfortable with the fact I was fourteen or fifteen hesitantly trying to flirt with 20-somethings. But also I think it was extremely good for my development that I had a space with, for lack of a better term, trusted adults. I absorbed a bunch of shit from the puritan atmosphere and it was so good for my development that I had people around me who were like "hey it's good that you're enjoying your sexuality"
@shoofle Yeah I've been thinking about this too tbh. It's such a widely accepted idea even in progressive communities these days that young ppl online must be locked in baby jail until they turn 18 and then they get turned loose in the unencumbered sexodrome. and thats not a recipe for healthy development for anyone!
You end up with teens either faking their age and entering risky situations or internalising "it is wrong for me to be having these feelings at my age and I need to suppress them"
@shoofle Like people complain a lot about "puriteens" but these attitudes arent formed in a vacuum right? I think a lot of it comes from a generation raised online experiencing the ppl only a few years older than them, who previously they wouldve learned from, instead pulling up the barriers and insisting all this stuff is bad for your undeveloped young brain
@shoofle Yeah ofc like so many "trends" it's defined by the people who are mad about it so who knows really how much it reflects reality
@lion yeah.
Unrelated but my biggest question about puriteens is like, how actually prevalent are those attitudes? Because I feel like we all know puriteens from outrage posts that go viral and I think it's impossible to actually know how common something is based on learning of it through that avenue