i can't help but think about kids like this when i see calls to ban teenagers from social media or online gaming or whatever the newest villain is
well I'm in floods of tears www.thetimes.com/article/5ecd...
When Mats Steen died from a muscle-wasting disorder, his parents believed that his life had been a tragically lonely one — until hundreds of emails from strangers arrived. It turns out that he’d found...
This story nearly brought me to tears. So happy he found a loving community - and esp happy for his parents that they were able to find out about it.
This is so sad, and I'm really glad that 1. the parents let him do this and 2. they're discovering more of him after he passed so early.
What a story. I am in tears. I am so glad I figured out how being online helped my kid rather than listening to bossy people in the media. What they all do online is LOVELY. He made many friends online who did become friends in real life, who eventually did introduce him to his boyfriend.
This story really hit home for me tbh. Don't have an illness like this but finding people online has been a massive life saver for me personally in a lot of ways. I was also just thinking about how I would ever let them know if something ever happened to me last night.
I’m very disabled. Have been all my life. Without the internet I’d have zero social life especially in my teen years. I’m glad this kid had friends.
I play a game called Warframe, a sci-fi shooter set in a distant future. At "Iron Wake" on Earth is a memorial to a player, a Tenno in game parlance, to a late player who'd been there from the beginning - Datareaper. He created many memorable things and now we remember him. Kids, players like him...
Breathing is next up. Badenoch planning to tax it
it's like, of course games and socials can be used maladaptively. but so can studying, and hanging out with irl friends, and reading, and shopping, and drawing, and working, and playing sports, and virtually every other activity kids do
I remember back in the 90's when mostly rural teens got online and learned that they were not the only gay kid, and it enabled them to survive and thrive.
Dangit I'm crying now. This is so beautiful. I wish I could force all those people to see this and shove the understanding of it into their shallow little minds