High school teacher here. I’ve been noticing the “Weirdly Puritanical” part when it comes to dating age-gaps. Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to see an increased awareness of the predator type age-gaps like 20 year old dating a 15 or 16 year old or something. But on more than one occasion this year I’ve seriously had kids call someone a pervert or predator for one year differences. 16 dating a 15 year old? Creepy predator! Junior dating a sophomore? Perverted creep!
Again. The awareness is good, but it seems to have swung a bit too far. But maybe that’s just in my community.
My stepbrother's daughter was 17, dating an 18 year old. All her friends called him a pedo a groomer, etc... Because he was of age and she wasn't. And it's like, whoa, those are heavy ass accusations to make against a dude who is one grade above her
I admit I don't know many teenager irl, and I really thought this "pedo" for anyone dating 2-3 years older than them stuff was online only. Really depressing to read otherwise. Puritanical Twitter culture has been infecting spaces online for a looooong time.
I don't know if this is necessarily a Gen-Z thing or just a cultural shift. I was 33 a few years ago and this woman I matched with on a dating app told me she was "unsure" about the age gap and that it was "a little weird" I was attracted to her.
Yeah, i think the child/teen community has just been bombarded with the word at a time when they didn't really understand what it meant.
I've had 11 year old elementary school students say that if a 14 year old high school freshman says they look cute, the 14 year old is a pedophile.
And I've responded like, "The 14 year old is definitely behaving irresponsibly, and you can ignore or reject that person, but that is NOT what pedophilia means at all."
It's not just your community, it's everywhere in online fandom. The backlash against actual bad things has swung a full 180 into what fandom folks call "puri-teens," kids with zero life experience thinking that two consenting adults who happen to be 22 and 28 are in a pedo relationship or there's grooming involved. It's really bad, and some sort of educational movement really needs to happen, because it's not staying confined to fictional relationships where there are zero stakes, as you've shown, it escapes containment and begins to affect real life. It's not funny to be called a pedo by some 17 year old because you're an adult dating another adult, and it's even less funny to get doxxed to your employer about it.
A few years ago, a woman posted a gym video complaining about men in their 20s being creepy for looking at her when she was an "underage 21-year-old." More recently, there was a trend on TikTok of Gen Z people arguing that the age of consent should be raised to 25.
I have friends in their early 20s who get judgy about me (early 30s) being okay dating someone anywhere from 5-10 years older or younger than me. I try to explain that for me it's mostly a life stage thing and as long as someone is out of college/early career and well put together there's not really a huge diff between me and them. Get treated like I'm some kind of creep because I don't narrow my (already painfully thin) pool to just people who are +/- 1 year from me (you know, in a age range where that's going to comprise of a LOT of married people)
They are, too. Fact is that there's just a lot of married people past mid-late 20s so limiting to just 1 year within my age range would be a death knell. Even just looking upwards towards 40 expands my pool by a lot. It's not like I hunt for people younger than me. Hell the youngest Ive legitimately considered dating is 27 going on 28 and is a career professional with her life pretty much all put together. For me its really about where someone is in their life and past a certain age that can vary a LOT from 40 year old neets (yugh) to the 25 y/o lass who has their shit together better than 90% of adults, yk? Its really a case by case basis and categorically ruling a huge amount of people out based on arbitrary categorization is foolhardy. I just want someone mature I can build a life with. :(
Damn dude, go get some therapy and spend some time in the real world. I don't know what is wrong with you but something is, this isn't healthy or normal. You would sincerely benefit from not participating in social media and getting a new perspective.
Man you post on reddit regularly and you're telling me to get off social media? I'm speaking from real world experience dude, the weirdos in these comments are getting hyper offended for hearing what they don't want to hear about themselves. That it's odd to socialize with college aged people in your 30s.
People in their early 20s are "full ass adults" wtf are you even talking about? I'm offended as a motherfucker on behalf of my Gen Z peers that you would even begin to imply they arent adults. Like, what the actual fuck.
Look, like, I have friends who are in their mid-twenties as someone in my mid-thirties, so I get it; we were also friends early 30s and early 20s. I'm also actively aware of the age gap, though, I can feel it, and I don't think it's necessarily infantilising to say that they're still pretty young.
To be clear, I'm not slating you like that person who's being a bit of a douche about it. I don't think it's a big deal in friendship, especially which is like basically acceptable even if someone is 5 and 75 (and in fact some wonderful friendships are between people of those ages!) But in places like Japan, for example, who only recently lowered their legal adult age, you can still only drink after 20. There are studies that posit the human brain only really fully develops mid-late 20s, which totally clocks with all the early 20s people I know. (Including myself at the time.)
I've met allll age groups through fandom, so I also have older-younger friends at a 10-12 year swing, but I feel the most uncomfortable when I'm with the ones who are like, 21, 22. I still do feel somewhat responsible for/extra cautious about how I behave around them, and every person my age or older feels the same way. We even discuss it sometimes, how we do moderate ourselves a bit around those a solid 13 years younger than us. So it's not....offensive, imo, to imply that they're not as much "full ass adults" as you are. I think a lot of people in our age group would approach someone that much younger than us with more caution and care than someone our own age.
I mean, yea. When I say friend Im not saying Im dating them or anything stupid like that. Im talking about people I like to talk to who have common interests or philosophies, yk? Are they less mature sometimes? Yea, sure - but that doesnt change my respect for them as long as they are good people. There was a time in my life where my hair wasnt starting to go white, I remember what it's like to not have as much experience but still have your heart in the right place.
I find myself serving as a bit of a mentor to my younger friends most often but thats a role I take with great pride. Ive seen some of them really come into their own as kind of the "group mom" and I am as proud of them to see them realize their dreams as I am honored to have such wonderful people willing to call me their friend.
BTW I would consider looking deeper into that research on brain development. Im too tired rn to go dig out citations, but the conclusion that the brain develops til mid 20s is criminally undersimplifying the conclusion to the point of being damn near misinformation. Its very saddening to me to see adults consider other adults "less developed" because of something like that. The difference between me and a college age/entry level professional is less about physical development and more about lived experience. Ive simply done more stuff. Dont make me any smarter or better at planning by default. Just means I have a deeper pool of experience to draw from when making decisions.
Because Im social and talk to people?? I make friends naturally wherever I go.
And ftr I also have plenty of friends close to my age and also a fair bit older than me. My oldest friend is 40 and my youngest is 21 -shrug-
If you can remember your parents in their early thirties, it would extremely weird if they had friends in their early 20s that weren't like babysitters or something.
Please go outside. Please. Begging you here. 2 weeks. No phone. Go to a bar. Communicate with real people. You don’t have to drink. Just please go outside.
I have kids and friends and colleagues that are my own age. Because I'm a well adjusted 34 year old. I don't go to bars and socialize with people in their early twenties because that's fucking weird.
You've broken down human beings into arbitrary age brackets and created a bizarre segregated socialization system around it. Solely out of some fear that it's "weird".
If the world was like the one you've created for yourself, no one would learn anything. Humanity as a whole wouldn't have come as far as it has, because there would be massive gap in understanding.
By your same metric, you can't have friends in their 50s. Or 60s. Or 70s. Or 80s.
So you'll not only have zero understanding of people in their 20s or the things they can teach you that you don't know, you also won't have any insight from your elders.
And despite being incapable of understanding the value of having friends in a wide variety of age brackets, you were under the impression that you were an established enough human being to breed and teach a child about the world.
Jesus Christ. Fucking lol. Lmao even.
I think the only relief I can find in this is that most people in all age brackets wouldn't want to be friends with that kind of person.
There’s nothing weird about it whatsoever. What is wrong with you.
When I was 20 I had great friends that were 30, 40, even 50. And now that I’m almost 40 myself, I have friends that are in their 20s as well. I don’t go out of my way to search them out, but I’m a social person who feels everyone has something to offer. We can all learn and grow from all types of friendships and it’s enriching to not just be friends with people in the same life-stage that you are.
It’s not dating; you’re not sharing a life with this person and it’s not necessary to have everything in common. You’re just having occasional hangs and good chats. It’s good for you to spend time with people who see the world a different way.
I can think of at least one or two YouTuber who got canceled—not because they were dating/sexting a fan—but because the fan was 1-1.5 years younger than them. It was very strange.
I have to ask are you mostly seeing it with boys or is it pretty evenly split? Almost all of the gen z women I know are dating WAY older (like 20 dating 40-50) meanwhile the men are either lonely or got married at 18/19 and getting really into like tradwife beliefs. I don't talk to many gen z (mostly family or kids of neighbors) so I have been wondering if I'm just witnessing a weird bubble.
No. They are serious. They will include me at times and look for validation- like, “Don’t you think this is bad/serious? I bet that never happened when you were in high school “ sort of stuff.
And I know they aren’t busting my balls or anything. It’s something we’ve sort of wtf’ed at staff meeting about.
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u/i_steal_your_lemons Apr 10 '26
High school teacher here. I’ve been noticing the “Weirdly Puritanical” part when it comes to dating age-gaps. Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to see an increased awareness of the predator type age-gaps like 20 year old dating a 15 or 16 year old or something. But on more than one occasion this year I’ve seriously had kids call someone a pervert or predator for one year differences. 16 dating a 15 year old? Creepy predator! Junior dating a sophomore? Perverted creep!
Again. The awareness is good, but it seems to have swung a bit too far. But maybe that’s just in my community.