Other Options
My time on #Diaspora has been short, but very educational for me. I discovered #libre-software and #Linux because of @grin ✅ and others who encouraged me. I have learned some #history here and gotten some good friendly advice about #college and what to expect the #future to be like for kids my age.
It hasn't been all good, though. One religious #bigot treats everyone who doesn't share his copy-and-pasted opinions and beliefs pissed me off enough for me to block him. I also have to block a lot of #porn here (not tagged as #NSFW) which surprised me, and a gazillion posts every day about #politics. There's a LOT of #bias, most people have already made up their minds about things and are not willing to answer questions from some dumb kid who wandered in here. There are some great exceptions, of course, like @Muse and @Ji Fu and others, but most of the time I get the "go away, kid, you bother me" vibe. I haven't found any others my age here either, which is another surprise. But maybe it shouldn't be, I guess.
While I'm on break from school maybe I'll look at some of the other #fediverse platforms to see if they're different. And maybe if kids are welcome and actually do stuff besides the usual "Hey look at me" stuff they do on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and every other platform that doesn't respect our privacy.
