A 12 year old has the same reach and visibility as a real journalist. Normally this would be a good thing. The problem is that the audience has no way to discriminate across almost any intellectual plane.
I have seen this happen in local Facebook groups. I remember an instance where a dreadful, spiteful, verbally violent exchange of hundreds of posts was triggered by this community member starting a thread. Neighbors saying the ugliest things imaginable to each other. It was truly sad to witness.
Nobody bothered to see who started the thread.
It was someone who had just finished high school. In other words, a 17 to 18 year old, maybe a bit older.
The subject isn't important, what is important is that someone with exactly zero life experience, zero responsibility for herself or others, decided she could actually post one of the most ridiculous thoughts on a subject she could not possibly comprehend for many years.
People got launched into the most vile verbal battle I've seen in a long time because nobody took a moment to consider the source. Had this comment been offered in person, in the context of a town hall meeting, she likely would have been told to please sit down, listen, learn and come back once she had a kid or two, a mortgage, a job and the realities that come with adult life.
The internet has allowed this kind of thing to happen. It isn't about age, it's about a range of variables that used to create categories of trust. You had to earn this ranking over time in order to have reach. Today no such thing exists. Google, YouTube, FB, Twitter, TikTok and others will gladly hand you an audience of billions of people, truth and other standards of quality, in this context, are meaningless.