We did consider the idea that online activity might have contributed. That was before we recognized that the issues were present long before her online activity ever began, and before we understood how our child’s perspective, and before we knew more about the stats and indicators. Now that we’ve thought about it for a few more years, and been working through the issues with professionals, and talking a lot with our children, and listening to a lot of talking points from all sides (some educated and evidence based, and some not very educated at all), we feel a little embarrassed about our initial naïveté, regretful about the ways we failed to support our child even when we thought we were being supportive, sorry for all the kids going through this that don’t have any support system, and concerned about the damage that these culture wars are having on our society and democracy.
Social media might be contributing to gender issues and other kinds of social dysphoria in the sense that I am pretty sure the vast ocean of ignorance, prejudiced attitudes, and hate speech my kids find online have increased their fears about participating in society and reduced their confidence in being able to freely show who they are. Non-binary gender and sexuality is only a “problem” because some people say it is, and a lot of those people are online being mean. Personally I feel like the political tribalism going on in our country is a much worse problem than gender issues by many orders of magnitude. Anyway, I’m just glad my kids have some family and friends and adults near them, both online and IRL, who are accepting and loving and committed to civil rights for all…
