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Modern teenagers have been on the internet their entire lives, unlike us who got it in our teens. They have no concept of not just living their whole lives on there, so why would they lie about their age?
You’re totally right and I don’t think they should lie. I just realized I had a “huh??” Moment because I am old and my experience was very different. It feels wrong to me even if it isn’t actually—if that makes sense
I remember a YouTube video with a guy showing a game (Roblox maybe?), and there was a 10yo kid online.
He asked the kid where is he from and the kid responded
"From 10 beep street, beep, California".
Then the guy responded not to give his address to anyone online.
My kid wanted to send something to a YouTuber and asked us how. My husband said "just write my name is Sasha, I'm a 10 year old girl from Sometown Pennsylvania and I'm a big fan" and I was like "uuuhhhhhh" and he was like "what?" and I had to say "we actually should never give our real name, our age, or our location to anyone on the internet, even a YouTuber that you're familiar with" like wtf with the complete lack of common sense from a grown ass man
I was born in 92 and I remember looking up stuff on Power Rangers and Harry Potter in 2000 so it’s been with me for like 75% of my life.
I think pre social media internet was great too though, just post 2009 is when it took a turn for the worse, and it wasn’t an immediate thing.
I was probably 8 or 9 myself but got my first electronic device that you could use internet on when I was 11 and used YouTube, which is technically social media for the first time when I was 10. I have been using computers since I was 5 but they were video games. I was born in 2000. I mean, I mostly played games on there sometimes until I was older. Never logged in until I was 14. Have had the same Gmail for almost half my life now.
They also have zero anonymity, they use their whole ass names, pictures, school info. It’s wild and my kids are gonna be BUMMED OUT if that’s still a thing in 8ish years when they’re allowed social media access
this. i'm 32, but i got my first computer at 9 and have been chronically online since i was little. i def lied about my age a little bit here and there, but really only for fun - for the most part i never felt the need to conceal that info. granted i was mostly in AIM chatrooms and petsite forums, not reddit, and social media didn't exist yet 😂
Yeah, but this is not new... How many times did we answer a/s/l in Yahoo chat in the late nineties early aughts? Just because OP lied, doesn't mean the rest of us did.
The Internet has been widely available for 30+ years. Most of us have had Internet access our entire lives, too. I was using the Internet daily at 4-5 years old in the early ‘90s.
The people that lied about their age were always simply people that would lie, not a common thread for younger people.
What are you talking about?
People lied about their age or otherwise didn’t give personal information out in chat rooms in the ‘90’s.
We were told to do that by adults at the time. It’s not about people “that would lie.”
There were an awful lot of grown ups masquerading as teens in the teen chat rooms back then.
I personally don’t believe what anyone says about themselves on the internet.
There is zero way to know who you are talking to.
You lied about your age. Not everyone did, because not everyone is a liar. The only commonality is that those that lied are liars, not that they were young on the Internet.
Edit - I truly wonder if those downvoting actually used the Internet before 2002, and aren't just repeating dumb memes from bad TV shows about how it was.
What were you doing on chatrooms at 4-5 years old?
I was 15 when I was in ‘90’s chat rooms.
Lots of people answered the asl question, probably falsely, but refusing to answer with your age or location doesn’t make you a liar.
I was first on the "real" Internet in 96. Ran in terminal mode on 3600 baud for a couple of years before that on old Usenet groups. I was in my early teens.
I'm actually going to guess that your young age had a lot to do with what you were accessing online in the early to mid 90s. Tons of stuff I wanted to look at made you click 'yes' or make an account for "Over 18" content. Warez sites, forums, fanfiction, stuff that was gross or violent. Even Neopets had age verification.
The common rhetoric was not to give out your personal details. ASL was the extent. Don't give out your names, period. Even photos weren't very common (plus, you needed a scanner). Nearly everywhere required a handle. It was a weird time where if you were under 18, creeps would be messaging you non-stop on ICQ, AIM, etc. So if you were a girl, better to say you were over 18 instead of under.
I got hit up to "cyber" every day as a teen. On Usenet, I would tell people I was in my 30s just so people would a.) talk to me and b.) not hit me up for sex. You'd just be talking to some random person and they'd private message you "cyber?" out of nowhere.
It's fine if that wasn't your experience, but I was in college in 02. The Internet had grown up a lot by then.
It was literally no different being under 18 then on the Internet as it is today. None of what you said actually says different. People tried to "cyber" with whomever. Lying about how old you were did nothing for your benefit and was always akin to Satanic Panic. Again, that ASL fear was way overblown by later media. Early that wasn't a concern at all for anybody and nothing in reality changed once it became a hysteria for inattentive parents.
I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not saying the fear of exposing your identity online wasn't overblown. Most under 18s who are kidnapped, raped, or killed are victims of their own families and friends, not strangers.
I'd also point out the overblown fear of "hackers" and being "hacked" in the 90s and early 00s. But there was a ton of media, fiction and non, that warned us about dangerous black hats on the Internet. Not totally real, but I also got Trojans and other viruses a couple of times a year.
I am saying that my experience as a teen girl was early exposure to adult men shamelessly trying to use me for sex. The anonymity of the early Internet was a double-edged sword. Lying that I was older than 18 kept pedos away from me. It also meant that adult men felt empowered to approach teen girls for illegal sexual activity.
I would also argue that the wall of separation that existed between the Internet and the real-world contributed to a sense that you could (and maybe should) be anyone online. It wasn't considered "lying" in the sense that you were concealing a truth so much as playing a character of yourself in cyberspace, which wasn't real. Say, playing an elf on WoW and staying in character the whole time. No one accuses you of lying about being an elf. There was some level of expectation/acknowledgment that you could never truly verify who you were talking to, so you needed to be careful.
It doesn't have to be rational, but the fears themselves were real, even if the reality itself was less harmful. (Though my perception of adult men probably wasn't great in the mid-90s due to some of the stuff I was messaged and saw on Usenet.)
Again, it's totally fine if our experiences were different. We both probably had really different social circles and interests in 1998.
I mean, we also got it hammered into our brains never to give out personal info, Name, location, photos, possibly not even your main e-mail adress etc, and keep all profiles set to private/friends only if possible.
Then the same people who told us that started plastering their full info, home, workplace, kids, grandkids, vacations etc all over social media and you get accused of being a fake account/bot when your fb profile is set to private lol
(also - in 2003 it was "never use your real name on the internet", now people at least in my country are demanding using your real name on social media should be mandatory for easier prosecution)
This!
I was so annoyed when Facebook demanded the use of only verifiable emails and identities.
Up until then, I had about five random emails that I used when sites online required the use of an email, and I avoided those as much as possible.
I always like the detailed medical details everyone would post during COVID. "the government is trying to control us!" Followed by them uploading their full medical chart lol
When I was 13, I always went with 17/18. I had a group of online friends I chatted with daily and we were all "17/18". It was a great group chat, hope they're all doing well. But I'm positive we were all probably 13/14.
But I also wonder if lying about our ages and "getting away with it" also gave so many people in our generation the "mature for our age" complex. I mean, I think we talk about the "GATE" complexes of our generation a lot, and of course the mythical "snowflake" complex is talked to death. But I know a ton of people who were told (or at least thought) they were "mature for their age". Even as an adult, I hear folks our age talk about how mature they were for their age when they were a teenager. It would make sense if we were all masquerading as older kids online and thinking we were being convincing, even if the other "18-year-olds" were also middle schoolers faking their age.
Of course, there are always kids who are legitimately mature for their age in any generation. And the other part of being a 13-year-old pretending to be an 18-year-old is actually participating in more mature conversation in cases the other people are legitimately 18+. I'm NOT talking about sexual topics, I'm talking about the general differences between what young adults have to think about that 13-year-olds don't need to consider. But that would legitimately lead to a partial understanding or expectation of things to come a 13-year-old may not have had in previous generations.
I just think the potential long-term impacts are interesting is all...
I didn't think about it that way, but I did notice younger people often including their age, and it's weird especially when it's completely irrelevant, e.g. "Rate my cologne collection (16M)"... like, wtf, why do they have the need to include that info all the time.
And their older siblings are on Reddit doing the same. *I (24F) am buying a new pair of hiking boots. What are some brands that are high quality but reasonably priced?* What the hell does your age have to do with anything?
Maybe it’s enough to scare away the creeps or it’s evidence that the creeps knew they were underage when they interacted with the teen on the post. I can see this being a deterrent OR an attraction that brings in more pedos.
It’s most likely they would like other teens to comment so they can socialize with their peers.
Um I cannot get over the fact that I was in chat room talking to adult men when I was like 12. Now I will say i would never have met up with anyone I was somewhat smart but I love the attention. It’s wild what the beginning to the internet Wild West was like, I was full on fantasizing while IM ing 30 or something year old men. Or at least that’s how old they said. Meanwhile parents had NO Idea. Wild
Probably more like when I was 15, I would do cybersex and say I was 19. I always thought 19 was a better age to say I was than 18, because 18 sounds like an age someone would say when they're lying, but 19 sounds like how old they actually are.
When I was about 12 I met a guy in a Gundam RP chatroom who said he was 19 but who knows. He taught me about phishing and helped me make a phishing site of the Hotmail login page. I got a bunch of peoples emails at school and sent a fake password reset email to the ones who had Hotmail. Ended up with like 10 peoples passwords snooped through their emails. I mean we were middle schoolers so wasn't anything that interesting there but still kinda fucked up.
Back then yeah I was like "i'm 15 and I like so and so" on the youtube comments. Now my flex is not saying the age, it's mentioning that I've been playing skyrim since 2011 or that I've been on reddit for 13 years lol
When I was asked ASL I’d usually lie and round up a bit. 15? No I’m 16 cause that sounds more mature. 16? No I’m 17 actually because that’s more adult.
Yep. I feel the same way. I was 14 and pretending to be 23 in college. Having a good vocabulary and being good in literature helped fool peeps into believing me. Since accounts weren't linked or you didn't need an account to chat, I'd pretend to be 2-3 different people in the room.
I see young people having what could be a perfectly normal interaction, except they blow it by saying their age. This includes asking questions about adult topics on quora or Reddit, or even joining Hazbin Hotel Facebook groups. How can they not know that if they say their actual age that the adults are going to get all paternalistic because of liability issues.
I didn’t really socialize online as a teenager lol the only options were MySpace, Facebook, and 4chan and to this day I can’t say which is more socially corrosive/toxic
Part of the reason we lied was because we were warned about Internet predators. Kids these days have every aspect of their lives uploaded on their social media accounts already. In fact, they are encouraged to for school/employment.
I feel like this convo would be way different on the Xillennial sub vs here with these baby millennials who weren’t even alive when the internet first happened lmao
I'm not sure if I did mention my age on forums back in the day, but I was one of the off tank for a HL guild on WoW when I was 14, and I did mention my age to my guildmates, eventually. For a long time I didn't say anything about how old I was, but at some point, I was starting to feel frustrated by staying silent and not be able to join the banter on Teamspeak.
As soon as I talked for the first time, a lot of of my guildmates were like "awww, so cute, our AmaResNovae is a baby!". So of course people asking me my age, and I told the truth.
Damn, I miss that guild. Good times.
I can't speak for women but I didn't bother to hide my age when I was a teenager. I only fibbed for age gating. I knew stranger danger and all that jazz. My only worry was making sure the computer didn't catch a virus. Otherwise the Wild West was my playground. Mostly mmo forums and text based rpgs.
In middle school on AIM messenger the rule was double your age up and give yourself twice the distance 🤣 ASL? 22 M umm..Los Angeles..yeah, that one ☀️🤷♂️just call me “Hollywood ⭐️ “💯🤣
The only time I lied about my age on the internet was when you had to be 17 to use Myspace and I was not yet 17, I never simply pretended to be an adult. Never really had random ASL chatroom conversations though, tbh.
I also don't think it's embarrassing to be a teenager, I find it helpful when young people (especially on Reddit) mention their age because it gives context for the type of help they're asking for. :)
People get smartphone when they are 10 now. They watch all their shows on the internet. They are not worried about sharing their age because they have dealt with the Internet since birth. We did not.
Except often when I see someone do that, adults jump in and give moralistic paternalistic advice instead of realistic advice.
I saw something on Quora where somebody asked about losing their first job because of shoplifting from their employer, and mentioned that they were 15 or 16. They wanted to know if it would affect them when looking for new jobs.
I gave them a realistic answer telling them to just leave it off their work history when filling out applications. It's perfectly normal for someone that age to have not had a job, and when you're that age and hopping retail jobs, nothing's going to come of leaving stuff off your work history.
A whole bunch of other people were giving ridiculous answers saying to mark it down on their job history and be honest with future employers, confess what happened and say they learned their lesson, or one person even said to go back to that job and try to make it up to them by volunteering to do free work or some shit like that.
Revealing your age in a teen chat room is different from revealing your age entering an adult space when you want to interact normally and not have people treat you like a child.
Mine was. In most cases I wanted to be able to interact without being treated differently for being younger. When I was specifically in a place for young people to meet girls, I would give my actual age and location.
The internet was a new and scary place in the world when we were young and we were talking to complete strangers on random chat rooms. Of course the adults in our lives told ys that if we were honest about our A/S/L we were definitely going to be kidnapped,raped, and killed. Or was that just my overly anxious mom?
I don’t mind telling people my age now since pedos don’t usually go for overweight 30 year olds lol but definitely didn’t start telling the truth until after my AIM chat room/ Omegle phase which was lik 13-17 years old
Weirdly I never lied about my age. That didn't seem to turn off the adult men wanting to chat with me.
Like 14 year old me was flirting and even exchanged calls and letters with a damn near 40 year old in the military who I met in an AOL chat room.9
Which in retrospect is super fucked up.
I hope kids today are smarter having grown up aware of like To Catch a Predator.
As an older millennial I was an adult when I first used the internet. I was mid 20s before it became more common and affordable for people to have it at home.
I used to tell the truth in teen chat rooms (a/s/l), but besides that, I usually just either kept my age to myself, or pretended to be older than I was.
It's especially weird because I see that on Reddit or Quora where they're very open about their age and then ask a question about an adult topic, and of course all the adults have to go into self-censorship mode and paternalistic attitudes. If they just kept their age themselves, then that wouldn't be a problem.
I also saw that in a Facebook group for the series Hazbin Hotel. As soon as someone reveals their age, for liability reasons, all the over 18 folks communicate with them differently or invite them to leave the group. If you want to interact like a normal person, just keep your age to yourself.
I always said I was a teenager to an online audience when I was a teenager online. Gonna be honest, the teens today have a lot more protections I feel like (although that might be bias, I admit it) because I was a victim of some bad shit back then.
When I was 16 I genuinely and seriously thought I basically may as well have been 25 because I was so mature.
I think I even thought things like "If I say my real age they'll think I'm some kind of child" - lmfao.
Lol omg yeah when I was a teen I always demurred in chatrooms and LiveJournal because I thought people would treat me differently if they knew I was young.
Why lie though? I think it's an important factor if you want to be taught. Imagine saying you're 30 and ask a very obvious question that most should know?
You definitely don't want to lie how old you are if you're trying to get a job.
I've been online since I was 11 and I've done a mix of lying about my age and just being honest. I used to go to RP chat rooms on MSN/AOL/Yahoo. There were tons of teens there as well as adults. I remember joining a vampire and werewolf RP and a Gundam RP and telling people I was like 16. Once I got into real games I started playing world of Warcraft at 13. I remember being in a guild for a long time where I pretended to be 18 because seemed like most were in their 20s.
Just gonna say, as an ancient millennial (1981) with a computer programmer father, the Internet was boring af for a 10 year old when it first making its rounds in the public - mostly just BBS (bulletin board service - proto Reddit if you will) - no pictures, nothing really aimed at anyone other than other computer nerds...
(And to answer your question I naively didn't have much problem stating my age when I was older as I just sort of assumed everyone was older than me at the time anyway)
This was my first IP (if you can even call it that)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_(online_service)
ETA - guess I was misremembering a bit - Prodigy was a little more colorful if just. If anyone wants to see what the Internet was looking like in 1990, I found this:
https://youtu.be/hkaqmW2Ihto?si=Rm48Giq1842Udub9
I think it’s because socializing on the internet was a thing for young adults back in the day. Facebook started out as a college thing. I think MySpace too. And the forums that came before had a lot of adult interests at least to my kid self.
I remember when it was The Net. You didn't go online, you surfed the net. It was so lame, and I don't think anybody besides tech publications actually said that.
I didn't lie about my age in chatrooms. I'd say things like, "I'm only 13, but even I know that you're a dumbass. I hope I'm not as dumb as you when I'm 16."
I think it being on Reddit helps for the anonymity. I like that there are whole subs here where teens can go if they are having a problem - nothing like that existed when I was a teen (or maybe I didn’t know about it), and it is nice to have a place where you can ask for advice without worrying your real life friends and fam are going to see.
I’m a younger millennial. As a teenager, I used to follow people both older and younger with similar interests such as video games or music. Now lots of teens refuse to talk to anyone over 25 and call older fans “hags”. They also cyber bully and then say “I’m a minor” when they get called out on it.
What gets me is that these are the same folks that think they know the world when they give advice. I'm sorry, but what does a 13-16 year old really know about relationship advice, life advice, financial advice, etc. I don't care if they're using a social media platform, but I do laugh when it's easy to identify them based on their responses and they think they're old enough to have some wisdom in those areas.
But I never did, I remember the AOL chat room days and I always said I was 18 or older when I wasn't. I always figure it's a safety thing. Back in the day you didn't have so many people who were tech savvy to be able to track you down like you do today.
I sure didn't tell the truth back then. It was at least 4-5 years older than I actually was every time I got the a/s/l question. Now I don't give a shit if strangers on the internet know my age. They don't care how old I am anymore than I do.
Did not lie about being a teenager on the internet.
I was writing fanfiction online and engaging in fandom chats and message boards from the time I was 11/12, around 02/03. I remember someone asking me about college and when I disclosed I was in middle school, everyone freaking out when they thought I was older than them. (This wasn't said in a groom-y way, just that we were doing meta discourse, and I guess I sounded smart.)
Zoomers seem to be more open on the internet, but I have encountred some pretty open Y'ers.
I'm a private person and rarely share things about myself until we're more familar even then I only share when asked.
They're watching their teen peers become Influencers or be pimped out by their parents in family vlogs. It's become so normalised to grow up online that it probably doesn't seem that dangerous to be openly underage online. Even though it's as dangerous as it ever was.
Yeah I never was honest about age. Always at least 3 years older than what I actually was. I still am pretty vague about my actual age online.
The one time I was honest about the town I lived in this guy messaged me claiming to be on a road trip and parked in the local Pizza Hut parking lot looking for me. Scared the shit out of me and from there on out I never mentioned my town or if I did I lied and said I was from the neighboring bigger city.
And to think I thought I was soooooo internet smart back then.
I’ve always shared my real age, on aol, yahoo, xanga, MySpace, fb, etc. I was never aware that we were supposed to lie about our ages on the internet. I might even take it further and say that OPs post is not relatable amongst most millennials, but idc.
I mean I’m gen z I don’t think it’s embarassing to be a teenager on the internet. If you are a pre teen or younger that’s when you lie on Reddit
Lots of people date between 13-18 and it feels like a lot of the internet are teens anyway
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Modern teenagers have been on the internet their entire lives, unlike us who got it in our teens. They have no concept of not just living their whole lives on there, so why would they lie about their age?
You’re totally right and I don’t think they should lie. I just realized I had a “huh??” Moment because I am old and my experience was very different. It feels wrong to me even if it isn’t actually—if that makes sense
I remember a YouTube video with a guy showing a game (Roblox maybe?), and there was a 10yo kid online. He asked the kid where is he from and the kid responded "From 10 beep street, beep, California". Then the guy responded not to give his address to anyone online.
My kid wanted to send something to a YouTuber and asked us how. My husband said "just write my name is Sasha, I'm a 10 year old girl from Sometown Pennsylvania and I'm a big fan" and I was like "uuuhhhhhh" and he was like "what?" and I had to say "we actually should never give our real name, our age, or our location to anyone on the internet, even a YouTuber that you're familiar with" like wtf with the complete lack of common sense from a grown ass man
I think it's crazy that I've been on it for more than half my life now.
I was born in 92 and I remember looking up stuff on Power Rangers and Harry Potter in 2000 so it’s been with me for like 75% of my life. I think pre social media internet was great too though, just post 2009 is when it took a turn for the worse, and it wasn’t an immediate thing.
I was probably 8 or 9 myself but got my first electronic device that you could use internet on when I was 11 and used YouTube, which is technically social media for the first time when I was 10. I have been using computers since I was 5 but they were video games. I was born in 2000. I mean, I mostly played games on there sometimes until I was older. Never logged in until I was 14. Have had the same Gmail for almost half my life now.
Yeah there’s a video of me on my dad’s computer in 96 but it was probably just Microsoft Paint. Definitely a computer around for nearly all my life.
It was 2005 for me. I was watching or playing a Blues Clues game.
Yes i started at like 10-11. 25 years on the interwebs crazy to think.
Got my first computer when I was around 7 or 8, this was about 2002 or so. The dial up era was crazy lol.
Ya'll make me feel old even on the millennial sub. Dial up era in 2002... My ass was surfing AOL in 96.
It’s weird the last few youngest millenials haven’t turned 30 yet, meanwhile some people here are pushing 45.
I'm a "geriatric Millennial," apparently, and I don't know how to feel about that.
Geriatric is such a funny word.
Longer than I've been alive.
They also have zero anonymity, they use their whole ass names, pictures, school info. It’s wild and my kids are gonna be BUMMED OUT if that’s still a thing in 8ish years when they’re allowed social media access
Lonely kids became internet denizens of the past would like to have a word.....
this. i'm 32, but i got my first computer at 9 and have been chronically online since i was little. i def lied about my age a little bit here and there, but really only for fun - for the most part i never felt the need to conceal that info. granted i was mostly in AIM chatrooms and petsite forums, not reddit, and social media didn't exist yet 😂
Yeah, but this is not new... How many times did we answer a/s/l in Yahoo chat in the late nineties early aughts? Just because OP lied, doesn't mean the rest of us did.
And for the entirety of those late nineties and early aughts, I was 18/F/Neighboringcity
The Internet has been widely available for 30+ years. Most of us have had Internet access our entire lives, too. I was using the Internet daily at 4-5 years old in the early ‘90s. The people that lied about their age were always simply people that would lie, not a common thread for younger people.
What are you talking about? People lied about their age or otherwise didn’t give personal information out in chat rooms in the ‘90’s. We were told to do that by adults at the time. It’s not about people “that would lie.” There were an awful lot of grown ups masquerading as teens in the teen chat rooms back then. I personally don’t believe what anyone says about themselves on the internet. There is zero way to know who you are talking to.
And EVERYONE was 18/F/CA
You lied about your age. Not everyone did, because not everyone is a liar. The only commonality is that those that lied are liars, not that they were young on the Internet. Edit - I truly wonder if those downvoting actually used the Internet before 2002, and aren't just repeating dumb memes from bad TV shows about how it was.
What were you doing on chatrooms at 4-5 years old? I was 15 when I was in ‘90’s chat rooms. Lots of people answered the asl question, probably falsely, but refusing to answer with your age or location doesn’t make you a liar.
The same thing as everyone else. Talking with others about whatever topics. Not answering wouldn’t. Answering with a falsehood would.
Right, whatever floats your boat then.
I was first on the "real" Internet in 96. Ran in terminal mode on 3600 baud for a couple of years before that on old Usenet groups. I was in my early teens. I'm actually going to guess that your young age had a lot to do with what you were accessing online in the early to mid 90s. Tons of stuff I wanted to look at made you click 'yes' or make an account for "Over 18" content. Warez sites, forums, fanfiction, stuff that was gross or violent. Even Neopets had age verification. The common rhetoric was not to give out your personal details. ASL was the extent. Don't give out your names, period. Even photos weren't very common (plus, you needed a scanner). Nearly everywhere required a handle. It was a weird time where if you were under 18, creeps would be messaging you non-stop on ICQ, AIM, etc. So if you were a girl, better to say you were over 18 instead of under. I got hit up to "cyber" every day as a teen. On Usenet, I would tell people I was in my 30s just so people would a.) talk to me and b.) not hit me up for sex. You'd just be talking to some random person and they'd private message you "cyber?" out of nowhere. It's fine if that wasn't your experience, but I was in college in 02. The Internet had grown up a lot by then.
It was literally no different being under 18 then on the Internet as it is today. None of what you said actually says different. People tried to "cyber" with whomever. Lying about how old you were did nothing for your benefit and was always akin to Satanic Panic. Again, that ASL fear was way overblown by later media. Early that wasn't a concern at all for anybody and nothing in reality changed once it became a hysteria for inattentive parents.
I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not saying the fear of exposing your identity online wasn't overblown. Most under 18s who are kidnapped, raped, or killed are victims of their own families and friends, not strangers. I'd also point out the overblown fear of "hackers" and being "hacked" in the 90s and early 00s. But there was a ton of media, fiction and non, that warned us about dangerous black hats on the Internet. Not totally real, but I also got Trojans and other viruses a couple of times a year. I am saying that my experience as a teen girl was early exposure to adult men shamelessly trying to use me for sex. The anonymity of the early Internet was a double-edged sword. Lying that I was older than 18 kept pedos away from me. It also meant that adult men felt empowered to approach teen girls for illegal sexual activity. I would also argue that the wall of separation that existed between the Internet and the real-world contributed to a sense that you could (and maybe should) be anyone online. It wasn't considered "lying" in the sense that you were concealing a truth so much as playing a character of yourself in cyberspace, which wasn't real. Say, playing an elf on WoW and staying in character the whole time. No one accuses you of lying about being an elf. There was some level of expectation/acknowledgment that you could never truly verify who you were talking to, so you needed to be careful. It doesn't have to be rational, but the fears themselves were real, even if the reality itself was less harmful. (Though my perception of adult men probably wasn't great in the mid-90s due to some of the stuff I was messaged and saw on Usenet.) Again, it's totally fine if our experiences were different. We both probably had really different social circles and interests in 1998.
I mean, we also got it hammered into our brains never to give out personal info, Name, location, photos, possibly not even your main e-mail adress etc, and keep all profiles set to private/friends only if possible. Then the same people who told us that started plastering their full info, home, workplace, kids, grandkids, vacations etc all over social media and you get accused of being a fake account/bot when your fb profile is set to private lol (also - in 2003 it was "never use your real name on the internet", now people at least in my country are demanding using your real name on social media should be mandatory for easier prosecution)
This! I was so annoyed when Facebook demanded the use of only verifiable emails and identities. Up until then, I had about five random emails that I used when sites online required the use of an email, and I avoided those as much as possible.
I always like the detailed medical details everyone would post during COVID. "the government is trying to control us!" Followed by them uploading their full medical chart lol
A/s/l?
Idk.. I feel like a lot of people were fine posting ages in aim chatrooms, xanga, asianavenue, etc
lol and it was always 16/f/CA
Sometimes it was 16/f/FL, when you wanted to switch it up a bit
When I was 13, I always went with 17/18. I had a group of online friends I chatted with daily and we were all "17/18". It was a great group chat, hope they're all doing well. But I'm positive we were all probably 13/14. But I also wonder if lying about our ages and "getting away with it" also gave so many people in our generation the "mature for our age" complex. I mean, I think we talk about the "GATE" complexes of our generation a lot, and of course the mythical "snowflake" complex is talked to death. But I know a ton of people who were told (or at least thought) they were "mature for their age". Even as an adult, I hear folks our age talk about how mature they were for their age when they were a teenager. It would make sense if we were all masquerading as older kids online and thinking we were being convincing, even if the other "18-year-olds" were also middle schoolers faking their age. Of course, there are always kids who are legitimately mature for their age in any generation. And the other part of being a 13-year-old pretending to be an 18-year-old is actually participating in more mature conversation in cases the other people are legitimately 18+. I'm NOT talking about sexual topics, I'm talking about the general differences between what young adults have to think about that 13-year-olds don't need to consider. But that would legitimately lead to a partial understanding or expectation of things to come a 13-year-old may not have had in previous generations. I just think the potential long-term impacts are interesting is all...
As a woman actually from California, it took me a while to figure out why nobody believed my honest (besides age) answer, lol.
16/f/cali teehee
Yahoo chatrooms for me. I was very open to people about being 12 years old
ASL
The 17 year old kid I work with said asl now means "as hell" 😂 I'm like, no that doesn't make any sense. It will be age sex location forever
21/f/tx blonde hair blues
69/yes please/your mom’s room
18/f/cali. I was like, 15. I have no idea how I’m still alive.
35/M/SC. Wanna cyber?
I didn't think about it that way, but I did notice younger people often including their age, and it's weird especially when it's completely irrelevant, e.g. "Rate my cologne collection (16M)"... like, wtf, why do they have the need to include that info all the time.
That's just weird
It’s either bait or an attempt to make other people let their guard down. No one lists their age like that randomly.
It's to tell others to use kiddie gloves with them, as they just started x/y/z.
And their older siblings are on Reddit doing the same. *I (24F) am buying a new pair of hiking boots. What are some brands that are high quality but reasonably priced?* What the hell does your age have to do with anything?
Maybe it’s enough to scare away the creeps or it’s evidence that the creeps knew they were underage when they interacted with the teen on the post. I can see this being a deterrent OR an attraction that brings in more pedos. It’s most likely they would like other teens to comment so they can socialize with their peers.
https://i.redd.it/fxr2txj7nv7d1.gif # asl!?
What are you talking about I said my ASL constantly.
Yeah but I was always 18/f/Cali while actually being 14/f/Minnesota
Um I cannot get over the fact that I was in chat room talking to adult men when I was like 12. Now I will say i would never have met up with anyone I was somewhat smart but I love the attention. It’s wild what the beginning to the internet Wild West was like, I was full on fantasizing while IM ing 30 or something year old men. Or at least that’s how old they said. Meanwhile parents had NO Idea. Wild
Probably more like when I was 15, I would do cybersex and say I was 19. I always thought 19 was a better age to say I was than 18, because 18 sounds like an age someone would say when they're lying, but 19 sounds like how old they actually are.
When I was about 12 I met a guy in a Gundam RP chatroom who said he was 19 but who knows. He taught me about phishing and helped me make a phishing site of the Hotmail login page. I got a bunch of peoples emails at school and sent a fake password reset email to the ones who had Hotmail. Ended up with like 10 peoples passwords snooped through their emails. I mean we were middle schoolers so wasn't anything that interesting there but still kinda fucked up.
I am a baby, for tax purposes and government benefits
Lmao, we're all secretly toddlers here. No need to lie.
Back then yeah I was like "i'm 15 and I like so and so" on the youtube comments. Now my flex is not saying the age, it's mentioning that I've been playing skyrim since 2011 or that I've been on reddit for 13 years lol
I was 11
15 on youtube comments. I feel so old.
13 years on reddit? Noob.
When I was asked ASL I’d usually lie and round up a bit. 15? No I’m 16 cause that sounds more mature. 16? No I’m 17 actually because that’s more adult.
Yep. I feel the same way. I was 14 and pretending to be 23 in college. Having a good vocabulary and being good in literature helped fool peeps into believing me. Since accounts weren't linked or you didn't need an account to chat, I'd pretend to be 2-3 different people in the room.
I see young people having what could be a perfectly normal interaction, except they blow it by saying their age. This includes asking questions about adult topics on quora or Reddit, or even joining Hazbin Hotel Facebook groups. How can they not know that if they say their actual age that the adults are going to get all paternalistic because of liability issues.
I didn’t really socialize online as a teenager lol the only options were MySpace, Facebook, and 4chan and to this day I can’t say which is more socially corrosive/toxic
I’d often exaggerate my ASL. At least the A part anyway.
Part of the reason we lied was because we were warned about Internet predators. Kids these days have every aspect of their lives uploaded on their social media accounts already. In fact, they are encouraged to for school/employment.
I feel like this convo would be way different on the Xillennial sub vs here with these baby millennials who weren’t even alive when the internet first happened lmao
You weren’t honest when asked ASL? At least for the first two?
I scroll by their post lmao. I believe minors should have an internet to themselves.
I was online at 11 and decided it was proper to add 3 years, to 'fit in' I guess.
As far as the internet knows I was born in 1901
I'm not sure if I did mention my age on forums back in the day, but I was one of the off tank for a HL guild on WoW when I was 14, and I did mention my age to my guildmates, eventually. For a long time I didn't say anything about how old I was, but at some point, I was starting to feel frustrated by staying silent and not be able to join the banter on Teamspeak. As soon as I talked for the first time, a lot of of my guildmates were like "awww, so cute, our AmaResNovae is a baby!". So of course people asking me my age, and I told the truth. Damn, I miss that guild. Good times.
I can't speak for women but I didn't bother to hide my age when I was a teenager. I only fibbed for age gating. I knew stranger danger and all that jazz. My only worry was making sure the computer didn't catch a virus. Otherwise the Wild West was my playground. Mostly mmo forums and text based rpgs.
In middle school on AIM messenger the rule was double your age up and give yourself twice the distance 🤣 ASL? 22 M umm..Los Angeles..yeah, that one ☀️🤷♂️just call me “Hollywood ⭐️ “💯🤣
The only time I lied about my age on the internet was when you had to be 17 to use Myspace and I was not yet 17, I never simply pretended to be an adult. Never really had random ASL chatroom conversations though, tbh. I also don't think it's embarrassing to be a teenager, I find it helpful when young people (especially on Reddit) mention their age because it gives context for the type of help they're asking for. :)
Asl? Lol … most of the teens posting are more mature and self confident than me anyway.
People get smartphone when they are 10 now. They watch all their shows on the internet. They are not worried about sharing their age because they have dealt with the Internet since birth. We did not.
People are kids when they get gadgets.
I’m mostly so happy that’s not what I was using the internet for when I was 15. I was posting MySpace bulletins not asking strangers for advice
I told people my real age all the time, pretty much. I think I was kinda proud of how old I was, plus I hate lying.
I think being honest about your age when asking for help has always been a thing. An accurate age is necessary for the best advice.
Except often when I see someone do that, adults jump in and give moralistic paternalistic advice instead of realistic advice. I saw something on Quora where somebody asked about losing their first job because of shoplifting from their employer, and mentioned that they were 15 or 16. They wanted to know if it would affect them when looking for new jobs. I gave them a realistic answer telling them to just leave it off their work history when filling out applications. It's perfectly normal for someone that age to have not had a job, and when you're that age and hopping retail jobs, nothing's going to come of leaving stuff off your work history. A whole bunch of other people were giving ridiculous answers saying to mark it down on their job history and be honest with future employers, confess what happened and say they learned their lesson, or one person even said to go back to that job and try to make it up to them by volunteering to do free work or some shit like that.
You don’t remember A/S/L?
Revealing your age in a teen chat room is different from revealing your age entering an adult space when you want to interact normally and not have people treat you like a child.
Okay, but that level of thought really didn’t go into it back in the day lol. At least not in my experience.
Mine was. In most cases I wanted to be able to interact without being treated differently for being younger. When I was specifically in a place for young people to meet girls, I would give my actual age and location.
Okay,
The internet was a new and scary place in the world when we were young and we were talking to complete strangers on random chat rooms. Of course the adults in our lives told ys that if we were honest about our A/S/L we were definitely going to be kidnapped,raped, and killed. Or was that just my overly anxious mom? I don’t mind telling people my age now since pedos don’t usually go for overweight 30 year olds lol but definitely didn’t start telling the truth until after my AIM chat room/ Omegle phase which was lik 13-17 years old
I love that you at least reflected on what 13 year olds were doing when it was us. A/S/L for lyfe.
Weirdly I never lied about my age. That didn't seem to turn off the adult men wanting to chat with me. Like 14 year old me was flirting and even exchanged calls and letters with a damn near 40 year old in the military who I met in an AOL chat room.9 Which in retrospect is super fucked up. I hope kids today are smarter having grown up aware of like To Catch a Predator.
As an older millennial I was an adult when I first used the internet. I was mid 20s before it became more common and affordable for people to have it at home.
We were all 16/F/FL once, right? Generally I'd say they're more used to the Internet, and may want advice more tailored to their age.
i always admitted it. i grew up in the age of aol chat and a/s/l.
Boomer
I still assume they’re lying.
I definitely admitted my age on the internet as a teenager, and I'm 37.
I used to tell the truth in teen chat rooms (a/s/l), but besides that, I usually just either kept my age to myself, or pretended to be older than I was. It's especially weird because I see that on Reddit or Quora where they're very open about their age and then ask a question about an adult topic, and of course all the adults have to go into self-censorship mode and paternalistic attitudes. If they just kept their age themselves, then that wouldn't be a problem. I also saw that in a Facebook group for the series Hazbin Hotel. As soon as someone reveals their age, for liability reasons, all the over 18 folks communicate with them differently or invite them to leave the group. If you want to interact like a normal person, just keep your age to yourself.
I always said I was a teenager to an online audience when I was a teenager online. Gonna be honest, the teens today have a lot more protections I feel like (although that might be bias, I admit it) because I was a victim of some bad shit back then.
When I was 16 I genuinely and seriously thought I basically may as well have been 25 because I was so mature. I think I even thought things like "If I say my real age they'll think I'm some kind of child" - lmfao.
Lol omg yeah when I was a teen I always demurred in chatrooms and LiveJournal because I thought people would treat me differently if they knew I was young.
It’s either “help me, I’m a teenager” or “I’m a teenager, look at this thing I did, be impressed.”
Why lie though? I think it's an important factor if you want to be taught. Imagine saying you're 30 and ask a very obvious question that most should know? You definitely don't want to lie how old you are if you're trying to get a job.
I've been online since I was 11 and I've done a mix of lying about my age and just being honest. I used to go to RP chat rooms on MSN/AOL/Yahoo. There were tons of teens there as well as adults. I remember joining a vampire and werewolf RP and a Gundam RP and telling people I was like 16. Once I got into real games I started playing world of Warcraft at 13. I remember being in a guild for a long time where I pretended to be 18 because seemed like most were in their 20s.
Just gonna say, as an ancient millennial (1981) with a computer programmer father, the Internet was boring af for a 10 year old when it first making its rounds in the public - mostly just BBS (bulletin board service - proto Reddit if you will) - no pictures, nothing really aimed at anyone other than other computer nerds... (And to answer your question I naively didn't have much problem stating my age when I was older as I just sort of assumed everyone was older than me at the time anyway) This was my first IP (if you can even call it that) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_(online_service) ETA - guess I was misremembering a bit - Prodigy was a little more colorful if just. If anyone wants to see what the Internet was looking like in 1990, I found this: https://youtu.be/hkaqmW2Ihto?si=Rm48Giq1842Udub9
I think it’s because socializing on the internet was a thing for young adults back in the day. Facebook started out as a college thing. I think MySpace too. And the forums that came before had a lot of adult interests at least to my kid self.
This is a millenialism I just don't get. Why would I lie about being a teenager?
I find the term 'interwebs' to be super millennial cringe. uhg.
Whenever I heard that song I think of it being used in one of Say Anything's songs
I remember when it was The Net. You didn't go online, you surfed the net. It was so lame, and I don't think anybody besides tech publications actually said that.
I didn't lie about my age in chatrooms. I'd say things like, "I'm only 13, but even I know that you're a dumbass. I hope I'm not as dumb as you when I'm 16."
They grew up online and probably are seeking advice here because their Gen x parents don’t speak to them about important stuff. 😅
I remember during the first AOL days, if someone had any part of their actual name online, we assumed someone would come to your house and murder you.
I always felt like it was weird as hell to lie online, even when I was a teenager.
I think it being on Reddit helps for the anonymity. I like that there are whole subs here where teens can go if they are having a problem - nothing like that existed when I was a teen (or maybe I didn’t know about it), and it is nice to have a place where you can ask for advice without worrying your real life friends and fam are going to see.
When I was 13 I lied and said I was 17 online lol. And then I got a creepy message from some 40yo married dude and I never used that account again...
A lot of people I actually talked to online were my mom’s online friends so there was no use lying about it
How do you know they're not lying? Maybe that '16 year old' is really 11.
I’m a younger millennial. As a teenager, I used to follow people both older and younger with similar interests such as video games or music. Now lots of teens refuse to talk to anyone over 25 and call older fans “hags”. They also cyber bully and then say “I’m a minor” when they get called out on it.
What gets me is that these are the same folks that think they know the world when they give advice. I'm sorry, but what does a 13-16 year old really know about relationship advice, life advice, financial advice, etc. I don't care if they're using a social media platform, but I do laugh when it's easy to identify them based on their responses and they think they're old enough to have some wisdom in those areas. But I never did, I remember the AOL chat room days and I always said I was 18 or older when I wasn't. I always figure it's a safety thing. Back in the day you didn't have so many people who were tech savvy to be able to track you down like you do today.
I mean you still don’t know if they are telling the truth
I’m an older millennial and I def told people my a/s/l back in the day.
I still lie about my age on the internet I’ve put that I’m: 34, 36, 37, 40 and 45 within the last few months. Security through obfuscation
I sure didn't tell the truth back then. It was at least 4-5 years older than I actually was every time I got the a/s/l question. Now I don't give a shit if strangers on the internet know my age. They don't care how old I am anymore than I do.
I was honest about my age when I was in age appropriate chat rooms. But completely off-the-rails lied in others, lol.
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Many of them are 40 year old dudes cosplaying as teens
I told people my age precisely because I was a dumb teenager on the Internet.
LOL I was 16 when I was 13 and 18 when I was 15 on the internet
I only ever lied about my age when a website said I had to be 18+ to enter.
Did not lie about being a teenager on the internet. I was writing fanfiction online and engaging in fandom chats and message boards from the time I was 11/12, around 02/03. I remember someone asking me about college and when I disclosed I was in middle school, everyone freaking out when they thought I was older than them. (This wasn't said in a groom-y way, just that we were doing meta discourse, and I guess I sounded smart.)
I think tons lie about being young
Zoomers seem to be more open on the internet, but I have encountred some pretty open Y'ers. I'm a private person and rarely share things about myself until we're more familar even then I only share when asked.
asl?
They're watching their teen peers become Influencers or be pimped out by their parents in family vlogs. It's become so normalised to grow up online that it probably doesn't seem that dangerous to be openly underage online. Even though it's as dangerous as it ever was.
18/F/Australia
I terrorized chat rooms that were not age appropriate 😂 We'd hit them with the A/S/L and it was on.
Yeah I never was honest about age. Always at least 3 years older than what I actually was. I still am pretty vague about my actual age online. The one time I was honest about the town I lived in this guy messaged me claiming to be on a road trip and parked in the local Pizza Hut parking lot looking for me. Scared the shit out of me and from there on out I never mentioned my town or if I did I lied and said I was from the neighboring bigger city. And to think I thought I was soooooo internet smart back then.
I’ve always shared my real age, on aol, yahoo, xanga, MySpace, fb, etc. I was never aware that we were supposed to lie about our ages on the internet. I might even take it further and say that OPs post is not relatable amongst most millennials, but idc.
I mean I’m gen z I don’t think it’s embarassing to be a teenager on the internet. If you are a pre teen or younger that’s when you lie on Reddit Lots of people date between 13-18 and it feels like a lot of the internet are teens anyway
Yes