{"id":490535,"date":"2026-02-26T00:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T00:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/490535\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T00:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T00:10:10","slug":"genz-kids-were-guinea-pigs-for-living-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/490535\/","title":{"rendered":"GenZ kids were guinea pigs for living online"},"content":{"rendered":"

Big Tech is in the hot seat, with Mark Zuckerberg\u00a0forced to testify<\/a>\u00a0last week about the dangers of Instagram in a landmark lawsuit brought by a young California woman, known only as KGM, who says growing up on social media ruined her childhood.<\/p>\n

KGM\u2019s story is terrible: Claims of sextortion, self-harm and suicidal ideation. Outside the courthouse are even more tragic stories, as families hold vigils for children who they claim died as a result of being online.<\/p>\n

But parents should know this: Even if your child doesn\u2019t end up in a hospital \u2014\u00a0or worse \u2014\u00a0it doesn\u2019t mean they haven\u2019t been hurt by social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw self-harm and eating disorder content that I did not seek out, and I was exposed to porn before I knew what sex was,\u201d The Post\u2019s Rikki Schlott writes of growing up on social media. Stephen Yang<\/p>\n

Childhood has been completely rewritten by Big Tech behemoths who simply don\u2019t have children\u2019s best interest in mind.<\/p>\n

I first signed up for Facebook at age 10, Instagram at 11, and Tumblr around 12 \u2014 all standard for Gen Z.<\/p>\n

At first, Instagram was just a place to see what my friends were doing and post pictures of my dogs. But it quickly became a portal to a world I wasn\u2019t adequately prepared for.<\/p>\n

Rikki Schlott was 12 when she signed up for Tumblr, after having created accounts on Facebook and 10 and Instagram at 11 \u2014 standard for Gen Z.<\/p>\n

By the time I was 12, strange men, often from other countries, were commenting on innocent photos of me with friends at school dances or at the beach and sending me lewd messages. Though I learned to ignore them, it made me feel overwhelmed and too aware of my own sexuality at too young an age.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, female influencers were inadvertently \u201cteaching\u201d me how I should look.<\/p>\n

Because of Instagram, I came to believe that the Photoshopped and augmented waists, breasts and hips of Kardashians were ideal.<\/p>\n

I saw self-harm and eating disorder content that I did not seek out, and I was exposed to porn before I knew what sex was.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg\u00a0forced to testify\u00a0last week about the dangers of Instagram, in a landmark lawsuit brought by a young California woman, known only as KGM, who says growing up on social media ruined her childhood. AP<\/p>\n

I was a good kid who kept out of trouble. And yet, like most all of my peers, I was radicalized by online influencers.<\/p>\n

My burgeoning political views were also shaped by YouTube. In middle school, the socialist channel Young Turks took over my algorithm, filling it \u2014\u00a0and my mind \u2014 with anti-capitalist ideas. Then came a 180 to conservative political influencers like Stephen Crowder, with contrarian right-wing takes, as I tried to make sense of the real world amidst all the online noise.<\/p>\n

Stop any Zoomer on the street and they\u2019ll tell you a similar story. There\u2019s a reason why 60% of my generation\u00a0say that the internet<\/a>\u00a0is more negative than positive.<\/p>\n

Alannah, now 27, said she learned how to get a blade out of a disposable razor from watching self-harm content on Tumblr.<\/p>\n

Alannah, a 27-year-old copywriter who grew up in Chicago, went online at a similar age: Facebook at 10, Instagram 11, Twitter and Tumblr at 12. The latter, she told me, was \u201cdefinitely the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first it was like, \u2018Oh, OK, I feel understood [by Tumblr],’\u201d she recalled. \u201cBut then you go down a rabbit hole and there\u2019s tons of eating disorder content, there\u2019s poetry about self harm. This sad-girl persona is really romanticized, and it just sort of pulls you in.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just reinforced all the negative feelings I had about myself. Being sad is \u2026 almost, like, aspirational.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a tween, Alannah was dealing with what she calls \u201ctypical\u201d self-confidence and body-image issues. Tumblr made it all darker.<\/p>\n

Alannah, pictured as a sophomore in high school, said Tumblr \u201creinforced all the negative feelings I had about myself. Being sad is \u2026 almost, like, aspirational.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was getting ideas that I wouldn\u2019t necessarily have had otherwise,\u201d she explained. \u201cLike the way that I learned how to get a blade out of a razor that you shave your legs with was because somebody posted it on Tumblr. I wouldn\u2019t have had that information otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though her parents monitored her text messages, Alannah had free reign on Tumblr because they didn\u2019t yet know what it was, but it\u2019s also where we were being exposed to the nastiest content: crash diets, cutting scars, porn GIFs.<\/p>\n

Keeping kids safe online has always been a moving target.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More recently, parents\u00a0have been blindsided<\/a>\u00a0by Roblox, a seemingly innocuous video gaming platform that is allegedly teeming with predators looking to contact children.\u00a0Recent lawsuits around the country claim that predators sent sex toys to children\u2019s homes and coerced them into cutting themselves on video.<\/p>\n

Legislators have recently\u00a0proposed an all-out social media ban<\/a>\u00a0for anyone under 16. But when Australia implemented a social media age restriction, kids\u00a0migrated to niche apps<\/a>\u00a0like Lemon8 and Coverstar \u2014 apps parents and lawmakers had never even heard of \u2014 to stay plugged in.<\/p>\n

Gary says that being distracted by his phone during high-school classes had a domino effect for his education.<\/p>\n

Thank goodness organic change is underway. Many parents are starting to dole out devices later, while schools have started\u00a0banning phones<\/a>. Because, for many of us, even classrooms weren\u2019t a safe space.<\/p>\n

Gary, a 26-year-old PhD student from Dallas, says having access to the internet in middle and high school turned out to be a disastrous experiment.<\/p>\n

His school district was one of the first in Texas to integrate tech into the classroom, encouraging parents to buy their kids devices and allowing laptops in class.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time, it was super exciting. It felt like I was almost a pioneer of a new world,\u201d he told me. \u201cBut I think we see now in the data just how much of a disaster it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gary, pictured at age 13, said of some of his teachers: \u201cI would just be on my phone all day every day, and [they] didn\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n

His parents bought him a phone at age 10 at the behest of the school, and he started spending an average of three to four hours a day \u2014 and, sometimes, \u201cbasically the entire day\u201d \u2014\u00a0online.<\/p>\n

It turned out to be a lasting disaster, as, he said, some teachers had no problem with kids being absorbed in their phones.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would just be on my phone all day every day, and [they] didn\u2019t care,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In college, he needed intensive remedial work to make up for the learning losses.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 100% support getting technology out of schools,\u201d Gary said. \u201cI won\u2019t be satisfied until the children are etching cuneiform tablets.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Big Tech is in the hot seat, with Mark Zuckerberg\u00a0forced to testify\u00a0last week about the dangers of Instagram…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[10414,153,97,4136,149,259,260,1282,1767,108,224992],"class_list":["post-490535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-facebook","tag-gen-z","tag-health","tag-instagram","tag-lifestyle","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-meta","tag-opinion","tag-social-media","tag-tumblr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}