How Big Tech Turns Kids TransDigital spaces are ever more designed to promote sexual and transgender content.
Jared Eckert, Mary McCloskey
Sep 14, 2022
"The short version of my detransition story...is that when I was fifteen, I was introduced to gender ideology on Tumblr and began to call myself nonbinary.” So writes 23-year-old American Helena Kirschner in her heart-wrenching autobiographical piece, “By Any Other Name.” In her testimony, Helena traces her pursuit of gender transition back to her adolescent obsession with Tumblr’s pastel-colored icons of waifish androgyny. The time spent on these blogs began to distort her self-perception. Eventually they led her to virtual haunts where her “friends” blamed her teenage angst on being born in the wrong body.
Helena’s story is not an anomaly. Other detransitioners, such as Keira Bell and Grace Lidinsky-Smith, were also exposed to gender ideology online. Today, research shows that the majority of those who transition were persuaded to do so online through social media, blogs, and YouTube.
The spike in teens using social media and identifying as transgender is no mere coincidence.
Today’s teens have only ever known a digital world. New media—smartphones, social media, and the internet suffuse their waking hours. The ubiquity of such technology means that teens spend more of their lives behind screens than hanging out with friends, going out, or getting their driver’s licenses. On average, teens spend almost nine hours plugged in every single day.
Behind those screens, sexual and transgender content saturates the digital spaces where most teens hang out. A simple hashtag search will instantly load thousands of LGBTQ posts on the social media platform of choice. For example, on WattPad, a new social media platform, one search turns up over 4.5 million original story uploads. Or consider TikTok. A search for “top surgery” loads countless clips of young women flaunting mutilated chests with millions of views.
None of this happens by chance. Digital spaces are ever more designed to promote sexual and transgender content. For years, Tumblr allowed adult content to its servers before changing its policies. Others, like Twitter, continue to allow pornography on their platforms. With respect to transgender content, TikTok updated its community guidelines this year so that "anti-LGBTQ+ content” is no longer allowed. More recently, Twitter, which has long censored dissenters, has been deplatforming those who say transgender activism is “grooming.”
Some platforms are even designed to hide youth’s activity from the watchful eye of their parents. Some online LGBTQ sites, such as Q chat space and LGBT Hotline chatrooms, allow youth to easily chat with LGBTQ strangers. If that wasn’t bad enough, these sites feature a “quick escape” button that hides the chat.
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/how-big-tech-turns-kids-trans/
