I was probably 9 or 10 years old when my friend suggested I log on to a website called Omegle on a summer night in a friend's basement.
I had never heard of it before. But we all huddled around our parents' laptops, prepubescent faces swarming the screen while websites shuffled us through random video chat feeds with strangers from all over the world. .
Some people were kind. The others told us to get out of there, but I desperately wanted to, cowering out of frame. When one of my friends asked a teenage boy with an accent where he was from, he named a country he had never heard of before.
But we all have images of people disconnecting, of adult men telling us “cute” in dimly lit rooms (we hung up immediately), and of all of us. For the first time, images of men masturbating were also provided.
At that time, we completely closed the laptop, not really understanding what we had just seen. And we were vulgarly induced to grow online.
As a member of Generation Z, I don't know a single female friend who hasn't received unwanted sexual messages, photos, or harassment online from strangers or men by her 18th birthday. Boys they know somehow.
That's because no matter how many parental controls and blockers you apply, filters are always porous, allowing the dark side of the internet to sneak in through your laptop or phone screen.
The media often reports the worst of the worst stories from social media; sex trafficking, blackmail leading to suicide, Teenager elopes with stranger online — Every normal, well-adjusted young woman I know faces the dark side of being a girl online.
In fact, my Omegle anecdote is not unique at all.
Sophia Englesberg, a 23-year-old actress from New York City, remembers her time on the now-defunct TV show. Created a website with a group of 8th grade friends from Pennsylvania When they meet a veteran and thank them for their service.
“Then he took out his penis and showed it to us and put it in the vacuum nozzle,” she recalled. “”[Omegle] It's like a man waiting for a girl. ”
Englesberg has had a cell phone since she was 11 years old, but she was only in fifth grade when she downloaded it, thinking it was a pet video game.
It's actually an anonymous messaging app where you chat as a pet avatar, which accidentally stumbles into a sexual conversation that confuses her.
“It gradually became sexual,” said Englesburg, who didn't know who was on the other end of the conversation. “They explained very clearly all the sexual things that were difficult for me…I was like, what does that mean? And they explained it to me. But… I'm in the 5th grade of elementary school.
“I definitely learned a lot of sexual language through that experience, and it was crazy because I was completely immersed in my own little world.”
Taylor Behey, 24, has been using social media since she was 11 years old and soon found “bearded men and gray haired men” attacking her and commenting on her appearance. I started beating it up.
While she has been able to manage the unwanted attention by blocking people she finds offensive, she says some of her friends have become swayed by the attention they receive from older men on Instagram and playing video games online.
“By the end of middle school, there were times when my friends would kind of flatter me and think it was cool. Like, 'Oh, I'm Snapchatting this guy, he's in his 20s.' '' said Vahey, now a startup and lifestyle consultant, recalling Cape Cod.
Some of these friends reportedly exchanged explicit photos with adult men.
I spoke to more than a dozen young women for this article. They all registered on social media as minors and reported receiving unwanted sexual attention online before they turned 18, but all dismissed it as a given.
I've been on Instagram since I was 11 years old, and it started out as a private account.
When I briefly made my Instagram profile public in high school, my posts were flooded with flirtatious and sometimes nasty comments from grown men. Strangers would compliment me on my looks or describe their unsolicited sexual fantasies to me. I deleted most of them.
The direct messages were more direct, including one about “naughty things” from a middle-aged father whose account had pictures of him with his children.
Like other young women interviewed for this article, I blocked them.
Sofia Figueroa Cruz, a 21-year-old Miami college student, says she has not only received suggestive messages, but also been exposed to vitriolic, sexist hate since joining Twitter at age 15.
“It was really the first time I was exposed to misogyny…” she said. “I think that was my first glimpse of being abused.”
She tweeted to me that an anonymous stranger called her a “pig-faced Jew” and said, “You deserve to be raped so much.”
Many other similar messages were sent to her by middle-aged men when she was under 18.
“Even if I don't have a lot of followers, it fills up my DMs. There was no reason for me to be targeted like this,” she said.
And it's not just strangers lurking online. Many girls report being exploited by perpetrators close to home.
Charlotte Brenner, a 21-year-old service industry worker from Austin, Texas, said female students are regularly exploited by their classmates.
It may seem strange to anyone who came of age before Snapchat exploded in popularity, but teens, both boys and girls, regularly exchange nudes on the app. The photo will disappear after a few seconds. But there are also stealth apps that allow users to secretly download and save images.
“All the boys in their sophomore year of high school seemed to be in a group chat, and they were exchanging nudes of girls like they were baseball cards,” Brenner said. “They say, 'We'll give you four Jade in exchange for one Natalie.'”
Brenner added that while she has never sent nude photos herself, she is “one of the few people I know who hasn't.”
Some of the young women I spoke with recalled being unknowingly groomed by adults as they came of age online.
A 21-year-old college student from Florida, who asked that his name be withheld for fear of being targeted online, said he became a “sexual object” online from the age of 11, when he started using Tumblr and Messages. Ta. YouTube A board dedicated to celebrity online fandom.
“You go into a group chat and everyone assumes you're the same age, but you don't really know. And of course, being a naive kid, you just believe it,” she said.
She recalled self-proclaimed adults online corralling conversations about sexual topics and pressuring her to describe sexual encounters as she grappled with questions about sexuality.
“I was told, 'Oh, if you're trying to understand.' [your sexuality] Why don't you go kiss your friends and tell us about it when you get out?'' she said. “Some of them were adults when I was still in high school.”
This experience caused the young woman, who now identifies as straight, to question her gender and sexuality and isolate herself from her friends and family.
“The internet feels very disconnected from reality,” she said. “There are people around you who will inevitably try to sexualize you.”
The Zoomer girls are the first generation to unknowingly participate in a mass experiment. What would happen if we handed tween girls a palm-sized portal to all the darkest potential that humanity has to offer?
We are the first adults to tell the story of what it's really like to grow up online.
They may enjoy using technology and social media, but all the young women I spoke to for this article said they regret growing up in the digital age.
As Brenner told me, “I wish I had grown up in the 1970s when my mother was growing up.”
