Porn is not the worst thing on Musical.ly

What generation was that, the Boomers? Because I'm from Gen X, and I (and numerous people I knew) had unsupervised access to internet connected devices under age 18. (PC + dialup + CompuServe account, or something similar, though at the very trailing edge of Gen X it might have been a more "direct" dial-up ISP.)

> and guess what, no one died.

I'm pretty sure that people under 18 did die in your generation, whatever generation that was, that could have been avoided had they had access to a smartphone or other internet-connected device, especially the former.

> In fact that was the generation that invented all this stuff.

"All this stuff" wasn't invented by people from exclusively one generation.

There were forums, there was AIM. People were shitty to each other in person. The twelve-year olds that are yelling racial slurs at you and calling you a noob in Battlefield were doing the same to their friends on the couch playing Mortal Kombat.

Every generation needs its existential threat to the wholesomeness of children. Comic books, jazz, rock and roll, hippy counter-culture, rap, and video games are mostly played out. Now it's social media.

The studied reason millenials were less likely to drive is not because cars got harder to afford or high school jobs harder to come by, but because of lack of interest (thanks to smart phones)

Even if you don't give your children a smart phone, they're going to be exposed to this behavior from their friends. And there are already articles of children who buy "burners" to keep their privacy from their parents.

The internet has evolved from being a source of knowledge into a cancerous entity that craves complete and utter assimilation of any decency humans might have. While adults might be capable of avoiding the raw, seductive power of the evil this medium permits, I think I speak for the majority of teenagers when I say that we cannot.

Constantly and persistently we are using the internet to perform heinous deeds unimaginable to our guardians. We have been raised in a bubble where our role models are Youtubers who have dropped out of high-school and where the names of famous scholars are annoyances of reality. We no longer look at the stars curious of the natures which lay beyond them, for we believe we have already witnessed and possess any great magnitude of beauty in our phones. We are mostly guided by the one and ever consuming belief that the internet is not an extension of our minds, but rather our minds themselves.

It is a terribly sad revelation that something considered so revolutionary and representative of human ingenuity is actually something wholly malignant to the young of our species. We are mentally and emotionally undeveloped and we have been given a powerful tool without guidance on how to use it.

I say these things not to bandwagon or provoke, but because I despise the creature the internet has given birth to -- me. I am a product of this vile creation and I want this cycle to stop. I do not know how many other teenagers have come to this realization or how many are still wasting away on Snapchat speaking of pointlessly obscure thoughts. But what I do know is that the internet has not enriched our lives but has rather regressed it to the point where we do anything for a couple of minutes on our phones. We are young and have been taken advantage of by political powers which want to advertise and indoctrinate; we hold unrestricted power in a domain of our own making; we are independent only in face when enslaved in heart.

Destroy the internet and free us.

- tv

- mass culture

- the suburbs

- the city

- small town/rural life

- sexual activity when everyone is having it, except you

- the written word