Yeah, talk about the topic becoming...even more...interesting?

You have nothing on me and you know it, hence the keyboard warrior jibe which isn't even accurate. I'd say anything to a person face to face I'd say online.

Sure it does.

I haven't been in a fight since high school, that doesn't mean I wouldn't fuck someone up if I had to.

Jack, I agree with the thrust of what you're saying, but I do think recommending young kids to use social media as a way to gauge norms is a bad idea. By young kids, I mean teenagers, by the way. It's a habit I've formed over the years since my parents will sometimes refer to people in their early 20's as kids, meant in a derogatory fashion, of course, but I find myself doing the same a lot when it comes to teens because well, many of them do act in ways I don't like. With that out of the way, I should point out that there's so much toxic shit that can influence even grown adults--alt right ideology, incels, even terrorist groups--who are looking to suck in the most vulnerable memberrs of society they can find. Kids, particuarly naive, socially inept ones, are such easy targets that it would be laughable if there was any humor to be found in that sort of situation at all. Even if we take the probability of them straying to such subcultures out of the equation, there's still a lot of damage that can be done through social media that no one would ever know about until it was too late. I don't even mean things like cyberbullying or older creepers grooming teens, but more subtle but still insideous things like, for example, shaping someone's worldview by posturing and giving the idea that everyone out there acts like hostile dickheads, for lack of a better term, all the time.

My first introduction to the world of online interactions was via Accessible Chat when I was 12. When my dad found out, I was grounded, and spoken to quite harshly about it. In hindsight, I'm glad he did what he did, because I wasn't ready for that kind of thing at all. I can look back and honestly say that the only thing I wanted at that point in my life was to not be ostracized from the small community with even smaller minds that I grew up in. Of course, at 12 years old, you don't understand that even making one close friend would have eased the situation; no, I was bound and determined to be popular, because popularity equaled success. It seemed like a straight line from point A to B that everyone else was too stupid to comprehend. So, when I found out about a blind-friendly chat client, (keep in mind that at this point in my life, I knew a couple of other blind people, but most had additional disabilities) I said to myself, "Hey! If I talk to a hundred people, then technically that means I'm popular! Fuck yeah!" I wanted this so badly that I overlooked obvious things. I know for a fact that I freely gave out my age several times. Pretty much everyone else that I ever interacted with there was way older. I saw a lot of sexual banter that I didn't really understand at the time, thus, it went over my head, but that was how my dad ultimately found out and ripped me a new one, because that was going on and he saw it.

Afterwards, I didn't really try to seek out any more services like that until I heard about The Zone BBS about 3 years later. By this time, I had my own computer and phone line, yes, this was in the days of dialup, so I could more or less do what I wanted, though, to this day, I still reflexively minimize whatever window I'm working in whenever someone comes near. I was 15 and still vulnerable--very lonely, struggling with depression and self-injury and other things that I had zero support in dealing with--and I latched onto a couple of pretty toxic people immediately. I believe one of them fabricated an abusive situation to try and get sexual favors from me. Another was an antagonistic asshole who no one liked really, but I wasn't smart enough to realize that, so I took the bait over and over again and let him get to me over the smallest and dumbest things. I, as well as pretty much everyone else, knew who to block so that weird questions wouldn't flood your PM's on a daily basis. Even after I cut off the quicknotes feature for good, I posted a lot on the message boards. There were several people who it seemed as though it was their biggest joy in life to tear others down at every turn. Long into my adulthood, I am ashamed to say that I believed this was what socializing online entailed, so I avoided it at all cost. I once cut off a friendship with someone I played Kingdom of Loathing with because, though we chatted a lot and had even gotten to the point of exchanging Skype details, and I believed he wasn't a threat, I figured that all online interactions were bad, so it just stressed me out. If it hadn't been for my ex, who I met through an online class I was taking, my mind would never have been opened to the possibility of even chatting casually during a game I was playing like RTR or Crazy Party or whatever. Though the damage from things that happened in that relationship runs deep, I will always be grateful to him for at least showing me that people aren't all out to get you or taking on some sort of Jekyll and Hyde persona just because they're typing on a keyboard. Oh, plenty do, and there's no denying that, but I also wouldn't have met the person I'm hoping to take things further with had I not exchanged several messages with him on Crazy Party one day back in August. I wouldn't have responded to an old friend who was trying to get in touch with me for ages, now I occasionally go hang out with him and a bunch of others on a Team Talk server. I wouldn't have gotten involved with BSG, and spent several Friday nights playing card games with those guys and having a hell of a good time doing so. I wouldn't even have finally decided to get a Twitter account.

I never have been, and never will be, remotely close to being a social butterfly, or anything resembling normalcy, but I'm pretty content with my life as it is at the moment. Oh, I am a fairly negative person, and I'm slowly trying to chip away at that, but I'll probably always be that way to a large degree, and my early experiences with navigating the wonderful world of the web did not help matters. So, just think, when I was struggling through my adolescence and making things harder on myself by not just unplugging the goddamn phone line, imagine how much harder it is for kids today who literally cannot disconnect. They might need the internet for their school projects, after all, and oh, they can sneak in a quick Facebook break, right? Right, of course they can, cause Mom and Dad can't stop them; even if they have parental controls enabled, they are so easy to circumvent by even the most docile and unadventurous of kids that they might as well not exist at all.

TLDR: No, social media is not the answer; I suppose it could help if you're good at self-moderation, which A. teens' brains aren't really designed to do that yet, and B. curiosity is, frankly, a bitch. You're gonna get tired of the cat videos and innocent memes shared between friends pretty quickly, to say nothing of targeted ads just begging you to click them, poor understanding of viruses/malware, etc. I just don't see that being a viable or acceptable option.

@Turtlepower17 Thank you for bringing that further. I was trying to illustrate the point of people who limit their interaction, or have their actions limited by ,a sheltered world. My social media point was a wild attempt at more ways to get out and get a glimpse of reality if people are in these sheltered environments that don't really allow for any other social interaction. And reality it may be, but you are absolutely right it is absolutely not the harsh reality you want exposed to kids straight off. And now with people being forcedly connected to the net nowadays, it brings forth the almost unavoidable, Brave New World-esc reality of social media that keeps you wanting more, similar to how a slot machine now presents you with a couch-like seating arrangement to keep you comfortable, or rather, keep your playtime going longer by making you not want to get up again. And people limiting their interaction with people and moderating who is and isn't worth your time is totally not something younger people should be exposed to simply by being thrown into the world as it were. If you have parents that don't bother with the parental control being that they do far more harm than actual good, and probably sell your data while you're at it, then you'll have parents that actually sit down with their kids and have good discuissions (not interrogations) about what to look out for on the net. Of course now the world is bringing strangers closer to people now with rideshare and Air B&B, which is a double-edged sword for both sides of the coin. Just as there are some of the nicest people you may literally run into on your way to work, this rideshare biz unfortunatley makes it easier for the currupt assholes to expose themselves to passengers similarly to a questionable Facebook friend request/message.
Is the world going to hell in a handbasket? No, not necessarily, but there's no denying the internet is worse off than it was a decade ago when you actually had time to think about what you were typing while you had no choice but to wait for it to go across cyber-space. The internet has turned from a getaay for some, to a shitshow if you get caught in the midst of it. And then there are good people and sites around as well, though some more weed-pulling is necessary to find that stuff and now with things like cancel culture running rampent through social media and hitting the wrong people for the wron reasons, even good people have to watch out for supposedly good-intended people doing more harm than good just for hits.

Moderation:
Cmerry, consider this an official warning. I have no idea whether or not Ironcross is a big dude or not, weight-wise, but whether he is or is not, fat-shaming is just not okay, and one of your latest posts is full of it. You try to talk about maturity, and then resort to half-baked fat-shaming? Nope, dude. Sorry. Doesn't work. So that's why you have a warning.

Cmerry, don't make this worse.
You mention a little extra weight. You mention trouble getting out the front door. You mention difficulty getting up if he's knocked down after "all that time sitting in a computer chair".
Open and shut, my dude. It's fat-shaming.

I recognize that Ironcross tends to bluster sometimes, and I've personally told him to cool his jets several times. But this does not under any circumstances justify fat-shaming. Please don't treat us like we're stupid. You don't get to claim you were talking about being a keyboard warrior when you made three fat jokes in post 59. Any attempt to defend this behaviour is done on bad faith.

Yeah, Jack, you and I are more or less on the same page. It's unfortunate that so many blind people are sheltered to the point where things like the OP need to be a thing in the first place. It's a shitshow for sure, and makes one think. Who was better off, pre-internet blind people, or hell, let's not even say that, let's say anyone with a prominent, recognizable disability which would have them perceived as different or even untouchable within the bounds of their living situation, or today's generation of the same, who have access to anything they want to know, except for real world experience? I'm sure we could go back and forth about that all day, and, while it would be a truly fascinating discussion, it wouldn't accomplish much.

There are blindness-based institutions and training programs that do a lot of good things. But as has been stated, there are many which shelter to the detriment of students, and that's definitely not good for anybody.

I am so, so grateful that I was mainstreamed. When I was five or six, the public school board where I'd attended kindergarten and first grade started trying to push a blind school on us. My mom's response was basically "over my dead body". The school was an hour away, would've meant I either had over an hour's commute every day or would've only been home on weekends. It also meant I would've been spending the majority of my time around blind people. That in and of itself is not an awful thing - there are many lovely blind people out there in the world, I've even met some of them - but unfortunately, upon visiting this school, we discovered something a bit insidious. A lot of "blindisms" were present, and a sizable part of the population was actually deafblind; there was a lot of loud vocalizations, humming, rocking, hand-flapping and other stuff going on (I remember some of this myself, and my parents told me other things which meshed with the slivers I can still recall). Anyway, they did not want me raised in that sort of environment, and did not want me an hour from home more hours of the week than not during the school year, so that was a hard nope. So I was mainstreamed. Sometimes I didn't have books or assignments prepared on time, and I had to play catch-up. We had to think on the fly in order to find ways to teach me more complex geometry and other bits of math (I had hell trying to picture how to calculate the surface area of a cylinder, for instance). We had to find different things I could do in gym class, because running around playing dodgeball and ball hockey and god knows what else was just a recipe for somebody getting hurt. There were some behavioural issues when I was young, because I'd get bored and then get disruptive. But overall, I was raised around sighted individuals, I learned to listen to them and talk to them. I didn't care about everything they did, not by a longshot, but virtually all of my good friends were sighted, and it was never a pity thing. Still isn't, to this day. My current partner is sighted, and in total, all but two of my partners throughout my life have also been sighted. I don't mind blind people, but the cringe-worthy, extremely socially awkward stuff just makes me want to run like hell the other way. People imitating screenreaders, people who don't observe even basic hygiene, people who think it's really amusing to make "fight" recordings between screenreader voices...just no. No. All the no.

I'm not prepared to speak to whether or not this or that or the other blind school teaches the proper etiquette for navigating the world, but I feel that my lack of experience actually makes this harder for me to empathize with. So much of it, for me, is common sense that I have trouble finding the difficulty. I find myself thinking "God, just go -talk to them already!" or "you know, a "hello" never hurt anyone".
And inasmuch as maturity relates to this conversation, I really don't think age is a definitive indicator of maturity. I think the only approach that works is a reactive one. Rather than trying to set this arbitrary age limit on internet access, particularly on this forum, we simply observe those who show up, and if their immaturity or disregard for rules gets them in trouble, they're dealt with.

Agreed with Jayde very much regarding this...

yeah, much agreed. If I'm going to make tts anything, it has to be an actual audio production or a story that, while it may feature some speech-based inside humor here and there, isn't always windows vs whatever, over and over again. TTS stuff can actually have some sighted appeal, take the series of tv show logo bloopers on Yutube.