Social media needs kids
Kids create the best of the internet.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
If you’re a minor who reads Embedded, tell me when you’re older. —Kate
New on ICYMI: Grifters are capitalizing off of viral World Cup moments.
Head over here to subscribe to ICYMI wherever you listen to podcasts 🫶
When I started using the internet as a kid, I broke my parents’ every rule. I did not, among other things, only use AIM in the living room under their supervision. I logged onto forums in my room and chatted almost exclusively with strangers. I was lucky enough to become genuine internet friends with a number of these people, but my online world was mostly comprised of the very people I had been warned to stay away from.
My parents worried that there were dangerous adults online, pretending to be kids. That’s a real concern. But after a year and a half of asking guests on ICYMI for their earliest memories of the internet, I have come to realize that no one ever talks about the much more common thing online: kids pretending to be adults.
One first-time guest told me about giving advice on a cat forum at nine years old to an adult who was struggling to get their pet to use the litter box. Another talked as a tween with a middle-aged man, who was none the wiser, about basketball. To the many guests who have told me stories like this, half the fun of using the internet as a child was that you were finally taken seriously, because no one had any reason to think you shouldn’t be.
Because why would a child reply on Reddit to a question about The Beatles, or comment on a video of the president? Maybe the better question is: Why wouldn’t they? It’s only natural to assume that we’re online with our peers, but the fact is, we share the same internet with children. We did when I was growing up, and we certainly do now, even as under-sixteens are being banned from social media in Australia, the UK, and, soon, Canada.
I firmly believe that we should work to limit children’s screen time, mostly because it erodes meaningful socialization and real-life experiences. But social media bans are not the way to do it. First off, they don’t work: Kids are still getting online, but now, if they get in trouble or encounter danger, they’ll be even less likely to bring it to their parents, because it would mean admitting they broke a law. And ultimately what these bans are doing is punishing users for choices that the platforms are making. As I’ve written, it’s by design that any of us, including children, get sucked into scrolling.
But there’s another, less discussed consideration here: So much of what we love about the internet wouldn’t exist without kids on it.
