2024 and the death of online safety

yayayayay let's start off with something controversial. disclaimers: yes i think minors should be allowed to go online. yes i think they should be allowed to be online unsupervised. no i am not a creepy weirdo for pointing out that minors and adults should not be interacting with no supervision.
is that a spoiler? maybe. trigger warning for mentions of grooming, kinks and other things that should never be mentioned in the same sentence as the word 'minor'. also opinions ahead. you have been warned. also no names of minors or their blogs will be mentioned below, despite the disturbing things i saw that prompted this essay.

introduction

amongst those of us who enjoy the internet - sometimes also termed the extremely online, thank you shanspeare, we often find ourselves caught in an age old dilemma. should adults and minors interact online unsupervised?

perspectives

oftentimes i see minors and adults alike argue that, yes, they should be allowed to interact freely online. for one, these groups are only delineated by one flimsy day, aka, is your 18th birthday (assuming that is the age of majority in your country) today or tomorrow? secondly, how can you separate groups of people nebulously assigned to such categories like this when in reality, they interact freely in person all the time? however, the interaction of adults and minors has not come without consequences for minors, a uniquely vulnerable group due to their lack of legal rights and responsibilities. at the same time that minors push and fight to be allowed into spaces where adults choose to exist separately, minors are groomed online - and sometimes physically harmed - by those they believe they can trust. in spaces where minors and adults are allowed to interact and direct message (or, dm) frequently, it is normalised for minors that they can, and should, divulge highly personal information about themselves, including their birthdates down to the year, real names, disabilities, pictures of themselves with even more identifying information and, most horrifyingly, locations. this is all information publicly available about many minors. worst of all, several blogs on tumblr mention that they are both minors and open to interaction from kink blogs, including bdsm. spot the problem yet?

...but this is a therian page

so why am i discussing all this on a page dedicated to, and run by, an adult therian? firstly, therian communities have the - admittedly pretty common - problem of having a not-so-insignificant portion of the community made up of minors. and this is where i started seeing (often but not always) tumblr blogs, run by minors, mentioning their kinks, disabilities, and approximate locations (down to the state). minors do not belong in kink spaces. if some (adult!!!) therians want to mix their exploration of their species with their kink, that is wholly up to them. however, minors cannot consent to these interactions, and i fully believe that we, as a community, should make protecting minors from these spaces a priority. minors cannot consent, and i don't know why this is a controversial statement to some.

in conclusion, it's up to us.

we've absolutely got to start policing who enters certain spaces. without getting too into the neuropsychology of development, the brains of minors have not yet developed to the point of the brains of adults. similarly, the legal, social and cultural position minors hold in society impede their maturity (which is a discussion for another day). what we must do is start watching out for minors in our spaces. if you are in a discord server that allows minors and adults to dm, you should speak up or leave. don't allow more victims to be created by uncaring adults. we want this to be a safe space for all.

let's make it happen.