As far as I can tell, the group that seems to be the most influenced by the sea of disinformation is the people who grew up when that wasn't how the world worke

As far as I can tell, the group that seems to be the most influenced by the sea of disinformation is the people who grew up when that wasn't how the world worked. I see far more of the middle aged/elderly crowd getting sucked into conspiracy nonsense than younger. I think among people who grew up with the internet, there's less assumption that things are true just because someone said or wrote them. People can and do lie constantly on the internet and without evidence it's not necessarily worth believing. That there's some "news" outlet just blatantly lying and making things up, even if it looks to be made "professionally" is not surprising to a younger person. ----------- For personal anectdata: I'm late 20s and had virtually unsupervised internet access and my own personal computer from about age 8 or so, as my father brought home old parts from work and let me tinker/assemble something, and they didn't watch me too closely. (early DSL adoption meant I wasn't limited for long by speeds, either). I pirated and played all the violent games, I downloaded lots of porn, and while I was never into "shock"/watching real death/gore, the nature of the internet was such that you were going to run across plenty of it if you spent enough time browsing, I certainly saw a lot. I turned out to be a fine, reasonably well-adjusted adult, as did most of the friends I know who grew up similarly. I don't know all the details of their sex lives, but I'm not aware of any winding up with unrealistic expectations from porn. Always seemed like an action movie. Exciting, but not "real". Most of the shock stuff felt like it just made me more cautious. "That guy got one whack in the head and he died!" was a better argument against getting in a fight than the threat of parental/school punishment is. Same regarding a lot of other potential teenage risk-taking behavior, like reckless driving or getting exceptionally drunk. Watch enough people die or ruin their lives at something and you're a lot more cautious about it. ----------- To be clear, I'm not suggesting that it's a net positive for kids to view those things at a young age. I'm just not sure that the harm is as large or uniform as people making moral panic claims often make, either. Also, something like a third of people lose their virginity before 16 (although it's declining) and the median age is ~17 in the US. A lot of your peers were having real-life sex when you ran across porn for the first time. Worrying about them watching porn when plenty of them are having sex.....I don't know it makes much sense at that point. ----------- Looking back on that time, I'm primarily concerned with how easily I was talking with random strangers in great depth than the content I was watching. While there are some internet friends from old forums and chatrooms I've kept in touch with for 15-20 years now, that I could get to know random strangers like that as a preteen obviously had potential risks. Worked out well for me and I found great communities and interests, but still.