but sometimes you have kids online who don’t obviously seem like kids because you can’t see them

Point taken... Altho personally I don't care about how old someone is. When I game online or just squat on Lemmy/Reddit/forum, I'm fine taking to people whether they're 13 or 70. If anything, younger people tend to be more open minded, which possibly comes with having access to all the information.

But yea I guess some topics probably hit different when you grow up in a certain style of environment. Still, when I babysit kids, I find they are curious about everything and are willing to change their mind if they get explained something realistically. And I don't see younger people ask loaded questions as often as older folks do.

I’d imagine if you’re not in tech circles you also don’t find out much about privacy risks.

I don't begrudge people for not knowing things. What I find interesting is how they react when they learn about something, or their initial train of thought. You probably know the experiment of asking randos "should dihydrohen monoxide be banned?"

I have this hobby almost, I like finding new things, weird and divisive stuff. Oddball topics, weird fetishes, strange habits, crazy hobbies, wild art, whatever. If there's a community with "weird" in the title, I'll probably subscribe to it.

And it also gives me some insight into how outsiders react when they stumble upon that stuff. Most people, when confronted with something out of their ordinary, tend to go "damn good thing I'm normal, everyone is weird" or worse. So I guess it is human nature, but you can also imagine how tiring it can get.