During the quarantine, like many others, I buried myself into social media.
I done 2 hours of school work a day, which would be the easiest sheet I could find, or I would do a bunch of sheets with motivation and post two a day. I would scroll mindlessly through TikTok, play animal crossing, spend money on robux, anything. For my tenth birthday, I got a VR, and I'd play on that. I started with rec room, played VRchat a lot, dabbled in gorilla tag and then stopped all together, I still play every now and then, but I'm not as vulnerable.

2020 TikTok was a dangerous place. Constant talk on suicide, self harm, so on, almost romanising it, making it seem like a fun trend, a decoration or a cute tattoo on your body. It completely wiped its true meaning, a war that was won, a battle that was defeated, was now, just a cute little quirky trait.

I understand, self harm is not at all ugly, it's beautiful, you survived such a hard time in life, but to romanticise it? That? That's disgusting.

I was 9 in 2020, and that is what I was exposed to, all over social media.

And sexuality was a big topic
"Gay tok" "straight tok"

All about equality, yet completely dividing two sexualities.

All the sexuality talk really confused people my age, truly, and brought ideas of a lot of horrible words to yell at someone who behaves differently.

"If you pose like this is selfies, you're definitely bi!"

"If your favourite colour is red, you're a lesbian!"

"If you prefer cold showers, you're asexual!"

Literally stereotypes, not bug stereotypes, how everyone sees a sexuality, but it's personally stereotyping, if you meet someone who's asexual, immediately, you think they prefer a cold shower.

Bedrotting was definitely romanticised

"Not showered or got up in two weeks 👁️👄👁️"

"Hehe! This is so cute!"

"Real girl!"

So on, so on.

The internet was freeing, yet so restraining. You could be hated for anything at all.

Mental illness as a whole was romanticised, and pushed onto kids, saying the most normal things everyone does is a symptom for Tourette's.

2020 confused many people, and we all struggled in isolation, having no social interactions and depending on social media, people began slowly sharing too much to strangers online and becoming vulnerable.

And it all started with

"We'll be off school for two weeks because of a little stomach bug"

Layla and Ada were always playing Roblox with each other, non stop. I tried to join, but they'd just leave or join a private server I can't join.

It's sucked, being so isolated and not even wanted by your friends digitally, never mind physically. No one wanted me, in real life or in the digital world.

All I did all day, everyday was watch TikTok, play Roblox or go on my VR. Basically, I had no life.

I was so miserable with how I looked I never took any pictures of myself.

Literally.

No. Pictures.
At all.

I refused to look in the reflection, avoided eye contact with myself.

When I opened snap, I'd look away and aim for the messages button.

I took the camera app off my home screen, so on.

I hated looking at my iPad turned off, then I'd see my face. So my lights were always off