Because I used to be one too, and I understand how children become so caught up in their own self hatred and need to be seen that they feel the need to draw attention to themselves online to feel worthy. Going to the image above, Erikson's stages of development can give a window into how we got here. These stages may overlap depending on how quickly you have developed, I am between adolescence and early adulthood, but most preteens on scratch(and gen a online in general) fall in the school age and adolescence category, making for a rather unstable combination. Children this age are 1. Going through intense physical and hormonal changes, 2. Increasingly online, and 3. Trying to validate their identity or else face extreme inferiority. These kids attention seek and experiment with extreme tendencies, and find every slightly unsavory circumstance to be putting down their dignity. They experiment.. but instead of solely with fashion or gender or sexuality they choose various disorders they find online to play the part of to gain more attention. I was one of these kids, although my disorder did end up being diagnosed, that's not how it started. I often attention seeked and overreacted for I was online at a terrible time for my development, not to mention the process being stunted by the pandemic and my own inability to create meaningful relationships in middle school. It was wrong, and none of this is an excuse, but it could be an explanation. Kids need an outlet to experiment, it's often(and should be) at school or at home- but now they have internet access and express their pure preteen essence to a bunch of internet strangers. It gets better, scratch kids, you don't have to seek out people's time, and please don't- most of these famous scratchers are just teenagers, kids. These comment sections you're using to socialize become toxic warzones because you all battle in the great plight of striving validation. It's okay to be online, it's not okay to act this way, you won't gain the right kind of validation for who you are online, that is something to be gained where you actually exist, in person. And I'm sorry if you really can't do that irl, but I know many of you can. If I, a former scratch cringe kid, can grow into a stable almost-adult, so can you. Life has improved greatly as I finally moved out of the school age stage post covid. It won't be forever that your emotions are so out of control, and you can always choose to take the time to calm down to think clearly before responding to something you don't like. Strive for in person connections, as soon as I did I also began to cherish the few online friends that I was actually close with, and I met my boyfriend, who I care for immensely. Even if it's just someone you talk to in one class, finding your identity there is better than any scratch comments, and doesnt make you inferior to those with more.
Just wanted to share my thoughts on why kids ended up like this, especially 10-13 y/os who often harass people for not responding to them or something and then say they don't want to live. -thank you Erik Erikson and ap psychology
