There's long been a tendency for people to claim that the newest thing is highly detrimental to young people. As SCOTUS discussed in "Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association", this goes all the way back to at least the 1870s, when "dime novels" were supposed to be turning young people's brain to mush. Then, by the 1890s, the Puritans had stopped criticizing "dime novels" and had moved on to newer panics.

What's weird about this social media panic is that social media really isn't that new at this point, and this panic has gotten worse over time rather than better. That's contrary to every previous panic that I'm aware of.

There was an initial panic over social media circa 2005-2007 when MySpace was the main social media site. But even then, few people suggested that MySpace should be forced to ban anybody under 16 from the website or require a digital ID to verify everybody's age. The suggestions of that panic were moreso than MySpace should do things to make the site safer for minor users and/or parents should tell their kids to use Facebook rather than MySpace since Facebook was supposed to be safer. And that initial social media panic went away by 2010 at the latest. I barely remember anybody from about 2010-2021 expressing concern about minors on social media.

What's hardest to figure out is how this panic came back and actually became worse than ever before around 2022 or 2023. I'm not aware of a similar thing happening with any past panic about a new technology with young people.

I struggle to understand exactly who this legislation is supposed to appeal to. Really, parents themselves already could have banned their kids from social media by using parental controls. The websites for the parental controls advertise their products as being meant for the parents of literal 5 year olds. However, that just further begs the question of who this social media legislation is supposed to appeal to- people only buy parental controls for literal 5 year olds, yet we're supposed to want government-enforced parental controls to interfere with internet usage for kids as old as 15.

So I'm reading Johnathon Haidt's "The Anxious Generation Generation" and finding myself liking it a lot more then I expected to. Now, before you cry foul allow me to explain. The key thing I wasn't expecting, was for Haidt to be in favor of free play for children and teens. He even cites Peter Gray. A psychologist familiar to most youth liberationists.

He makes the point, that what he calls a phone-based childhood often largely removes play for a child/teen's life. He even takes aim at cultivation parenting, and the sex offender panic of the 1980s and 90s lasting to today.

Overall I'm impressed. I expected to go into the book hating it and to come out with full critique of it. The only question I have is could a balanced phone and play based childhood work?

I’ve red a lot of good things about Norway and their laws on child and youth rights. Especially about their strict laws against assaulting children, what do u guys think?

The “teenager” is a new concept in society, and as in new I mean VERY new, as in, not even over a century old. The age group we call and treat as “children” now (teenagers), for the majority of human history were considered young adults, inexpiernced young adults, but young adults never the less. Even though the age of majority was 21 in America, it seems that was only applied on teenagers for things like apprenticeships, voting, marrige, and the millitary, major life descions so that parents still has the oppertunity to step in, for everything else, we were young adults, and it had been that way for literally the entirety of human history.

But then something happens, the great depression, teenagers arent able to get employed and pursue their adult lives, so they choose to delay adulthood by pursuing higher education (highschool). These young adults are referred to as “teenagers”. Over time, more and more teenagers begin to pursue highschool, they develop their own subculture unique to the older adults around them, marketing companies latch onto them as a new group to target, due to the teens disposable income. As the decades go on and more and more teens are in highschool instead of the adult world, more and more people begin to see them not as young adults, but as actual children, and pass laws because of it. The teen brain myth is born in social concious. Restrictions get tighter,legally and socially, highschool becomes pretty much mandatory, and now we see the same thing happening to day. Not with 14-18 year olds, but with 18-22/24 year olds.

Slightly less young adults delaying adulthood due to a failing economy, getting increasingly infantilizied due to their dependance on their parents and lack of real world knowledge. College becoming more and more mandatory and more restrictions being passed on this age group, being increasingly seen as “kids”. And now “the brain doesnt devlop until 25”. As you see, conviently, before the western education system became mandatory, teenagers were perfectly capable of handling adulthood, but now they are children with underdevloped brains. Before college became basically mandatory, 18-22/24 year olds were perfectly capable of handling adulthood, but we are now conviently children with underdevloped brains. So if you are a “child” and you’re wondering, why am I seen as such when I am fully capable of handling these tasks, as was everyone else my age before the 1900s? Its not because you have an “inferior child brain”, which as we know, is a myth, its because of the economy and western education system, the western education system that makes a large amount of money on said myths and infantilization.Links down below

i just saw a post on here going "do we have any hope?", and i'd like to say that despite the ongoing lack of rights for youth, we still should promote against it it doesn't matter if it's just posting on a reddit platform. i am not the biggest optimist, but things need to change and we need to tolerate that. let's strive for better.

it's so peculiar, misopedists means child haters btw

Don't you think something serious should be done? I wrote something similar once on this subreddit, but literally - don't you think we should do something more specific than just some petitions that everyone shits on? Something that would make our case, above all, gain some publicity. Due to Reddit rules, I will not write here specifically what I would propose to do, but I have my own idea and I would be happy to present it on Discord or Telegram to anyone who would be interested. So if anyone is interested, my name on discord is RhobarII, maybe we could create a server that will become the beginning of something great that will be remembered by history. I also say right away that I am interested primarily in users from Europe, although I have nothing against those from other parts of the world.

https://preview.redd.it/a796eesuwvvd1.jpg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=21d687ba187d5f3b0333a7ddf7f24ff754c07bd4

Want to rant? You found the right post to do so. Let's do it together. Comment under this post (each person can comment several times). The sole rule: your rant must start by We're youth liberationists, of course (insert your rant here).

Let me know what you think!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKzfo1CQFEA

The best weapon against the 25-year brain maturation myth are statistics.

https://ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/adolphe-quetelets-research-propensity-crime-different-ages

https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/60294_Chapter_23.pdf

https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuries-deaths-relation-driver-age-united-states-2014-2015/

In short, statistics really debunk the myth that decision-making matures at 25.

You guys are probably more aware of politics than average teens and you probably get that the decisions being made today will impact us for years to come. But what a lot of people don’t realise is that we as young people have way more power than we think and not just online. We’ve seen youth movements before we know the power of protest and organising. Now it’s time to go further.

We can’t just sit on the sidelines and watch the world get shaped by people who don’t understand us or our struggles. Whatever the issues are, the older generation who are in charge don't realise that we are the ones who are going to live with the outcomes. Whining and writing things online hasn't and won't do much. If we don’t fight for a seat at the table we’ll be stuck with whatever decisions the older generations make for us.

That’s where r/YouthRevolt comes in. It’s not just a space to debate and share ideas. It’s a place to organise. We’re building a community of politically active teens who are ready to make real change. And when we grow large enough, we’re not stopping at online discussions. We’re planning to take this movement into the real world with inperson protests and actions that make politicians and leaders listen to us.

Aside from the cash for kids system and higher level trafficking, child labor is still an issue in the U.S .

Think abt it, a person under 18 (sometimes like 21) can work the same job as someone 18+, but they get paid 7.50 and the adults can get paid 20. Which is really bad for the kids or teens who have to pay bills or something. Also when a kid wants to work they can't and it's "concerning and means they need help", but if the kid is being forced to work to pay bills and support a parents drug habit or something, that's ok. I've even heard of kids and teens working shifts even night shifts and either having all their money taken or working in a family business where they can't get paid.

Jobs also claim they don't let ppl in school work certain hours, but they do, especially if they're low on staff. I've heard of 2 teen girls working full time and in school. Getting off work at 10pm or later and getting up to get siblings ready for school 6, walk them to the bus, get their selves ready for school and get kicked out. In one situation the girl talked abt it on social media since her mom did the usual record flip around. So the girl got on social media and someone called her "grown", and she said "I'm 15, ain't nobody grown here". Grown is commonly used oh girls and sometimes boys who got SA'ed and act our. But here it was being used to try to justify the situation. Ppl who have to take care of themselves will act "gtown" to a certain extent I guess.

It's also funny to me that the term grown commonly gives the notion, "don't do bad things when you're young, so them when you're older". But yeah here's my rant.

It's still so funny because Americans especially won't even admit trafficking happens or is what it is. Not to mention there are many types of trafficking, so if anything my previous cash for kids system abuse (as I call it), was a form of low level openly legal trafficking.

But anywhere, both my parents are still pretending I am missing and trafficked, even though they know where I live because for the police told them. And I am sure they always knew where I was because they watched my abuse evidence channels. Which reminds me, if the ppl who claim they are here to "help" will side with abusers and snitch abt the fact I had 2000 abuse evidence videos, why the heck would they care to help her bring me back to where ever my mom moved to (because after I had to leave she moved back to the state we used to live in)?

My dad every so often makes post like we don't talk and will tell some pity story lie abt how he hasn't seen or heard from me in years. Ppl with common sense would ask why he's on social media pretending to be a model in decorative boots with women, if "his daughters missing". My mom had surprisingly left the situation alone a year back, which was shocing because she was the main participant in my $4kids and other abuse situations. She also was my min smear campaigner especially in 2020, because she had youtubers pocketing off my situation. Even some famous lady who's name I can't remember who supposedly spreads awareness to sex trafficking, but once you scroll under my pic she had merch 💀. Luckily none of this got any traction and I was able to get the youtube videos taken down back then. All though those "true crime" channe dudes were very weird and manipulative and started uploading on rumble, tiktok, etc instead.

So anyways I had got the courage to message my mom months back and I told her that she bett3r.not have some new guy around SA'ing my siblings or anything. I also told her she better not have my brother diagnosed up and drugged up on those "adhd" pills and stuff making him a "blk" statistics for a pity party. She didn't respond of course, I was actually worried abt her screenshotting the messages and posting it and playing victim as a pity party and pretending she doesn't know it's me. Well I left some comments on one of her old open comment section post, I said some stuff but no in full detail for incase anyone does go back and look, because I don't want our situation to be an open discussion. I also told her something that I had told my sister (on my "stepmoms" side) to get my dad to tell my mom (since no one really answers the phone for me), which is that the reason we all got sick in my sisters house was due to mold toxicity.

So my mom screenshoted the mold toxicity comments and some others and somehow got ignorant ppl on social media to act like she's some sort of victim. Apparently I'm a "scammer" because I told her we had mold toxicity 💀. They act like that was a threat. Ppl were even saying me and the police wanted my mom to "take the bait", that I ended the case. As If the police ever looked, they don't look if you're 15+, and in some places 12+. And someone was like "They're trying to come after you abt your missing daughter on a post that you been made". Or some crap like that.

Yeah I guess I should've stayed no contact, obviously my words don't faze her but I really think she should at least know that she better not be doing sick stuff to my siblings. I stupidly decided to call my old manipulative counselor that had claimed she would "help me get out", wayy back when and she told me to makena tiktok of my name for my younger sibs, because "they're gonna need to runaway too and will need to reach me". Shoot I have to hope they don't get kicked out at like 14 like all my older sibs on my mom's side did. And of course ppl are once again, telling my mom to come to the state the police say I am to "look" for me. Eh it's so annoying but it's what ever I guess.

Parents have a duty to keep their children safe. I'd also argue there a general duty that everyone has to not create unreasonable risk to the safety of vulnerable people like children. However, in 2024, society does not care about these things anymore. We've seen active disregard of child safety lead to parents ignoring their children while they fall for scammers like Andrew Tate or Mr Beast. Much worse, we've seen how this active disregard for safety has lead to children doing dangerous hacks they saw online and ending up in the hospital or even dying. We need to hold parents accountable for their neglect. We also must hold platforms like YouTube and Tiktok account for willfully allowing such content on their platforms. We also must hold those who post the content like 5 minute crafts, Mr Beast or Andrew Tate accountable.

Internet Archive has just been hacked. If you have youth rights/youth liberation writing that you uploaded to Internet Archive, make sure you have it backed up to your device. If you make youth rights/youth liberation videos, I recommend backing them up to the Internet Archive and to any and every online library that you can find.

If you read youth rights/youth writing on the Archive, such as No! Against Adult Supremacy, or Youth Liberation Now!, please make sure that you have copies of those youth rights newspapers saved to your device.

I recommend keeping multiple backups for any youth rights/youth liberation media that you watch, read, write, or listen to.

For anyone who reads my writings, they are also available on LibGen by searching “Liberationist111.” If you need a pdf copy of any particular one that isn’t on LibGen, I will do my best to upload it and send you the link.

Although I support youth rights everywhere, America is so much worse than Europe compared to youth rights. In the USA, corporal punishment is legal, people have no rights until they’re 18, youth are considered property of their parents until they’re 18, running away from your parents is a crime, and the Constitution has essentially been determined to not apply to youth.

In Europe, youth generally have at least some rights, there is no 21 age limit for anything, corporal punishment is usually illegal, and basic human rights apply.

It’s hard for me to sympathize with Europeans given the way minors are treated in America. I’d like to work together on this issue, but we must recognize the vast difference between Europe and the USA.

I feel like that everyday my government (the Australian Government) keeps making proposals that harm the next generation much more than intended. For instance: they don't do anything about climate change, housing crisis and cost of living, instead they focus on nuclear energy and banning social media for minors (found out yesterday it ain't just mainstream socials, but broader platforms like Reddit and Discord, and gaming platforms like Roblox and Fortnite) and I feel our politicians are clowns in a circus. Not even that. They are just narcissistic pricks who only pass stuff for their own benefit without considering the people who must suffer tomorrow. There is hope though. Hopefully the next generation learns from their mistakes and makes Australia truly a country that people want to live in. What do you think? Love to hear your thoughts in the comments

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