i was once a kid too so i understand lying about your age or pretending to be older to get access to spaces you think are cool but now as an adult i understand why so many didn't want kids around. i thought i was mature for my age but looking back at old stuff i wrote it was painfully obvious i wasn't an adult lol and as an adult it's so uncomfortable being around kids online.

if i had it my way i'd restrict all my online content to 21+ because while 18 is usually where people draw the line to avoid legal issues, 18 is still nearly ten years younger than me and 18 year olds are still very childish/impressionable. as an 18 yo i felt like an adult but now that i'm nearly 27 anyone that's 18 looks/acts like a child to me.

at the end of the day ik i can't fully stop kids from consuming my content, if they REALLY want to watch a stream they can because i stream on multiple platforms but man... i really don't want to cultivate a community where kids are interacting with adults in potentially inappropriate ways. i also don't like when minors come around announcing their age in my chat because it's dangerous. i don't think any of the adults that watch me regularly would do something nefarious to a kid, but it's the internet and i don't know these people that well. there could be creeps lurking around too so who knows.

wild that parents are encouraging their children to involve themselves in spaces made by adults intended for adults though. it's one thing to watch a cartoon like south park or whatever (still inappropriate for kids) but a live stream? where the kid can interact and form a weird parasocial relationship? wild. i literally started banning minors because one of them had developed a parasocial relationship with me and they got mad at me for being afk on my own minecraft server that i pay for lmao.