I had hope. I really did. For too long I have defended my generation against the assumptions of the upper-age. But the truth is there: we were raised on an internet that showed us everything long before we could understand anything, a malevolent yet loving parent. The internet has taken a seat behind Generation X’s efforts to escape that big red fruit and is laughing maniacally. But I didn’t realize something was truly wrong until I saw a seventh grader watching a deadly car crash on the bus like it was the morning news. He had AirPods in, the newest kind. He was eating a Go-Gurt. I think that’s when I knew the world was changing.

And this wasn’t even on a dark web, “you must be 18 to enter” corner of the internet. It was on TikTok. TikTok, where I go to see a dude eat apples while juggling them. TikTok, where I go for five seconds and then are magically transported to an hour later. With enough time the algorithm slips, and the lines blur between content and consequence. If some adults saw everything that 14-year-olds are watching nowadays, they’d be running frantically back to MySpace.

The thing about modern gore is that nobody looks for it. It just… shows up, a fun surprise delivered by a billion-dollar recommendation engine that thinks violence is a good palate cleanser after a cat video. On one hand I’m glad it’s the phone in my hand and not the chip in my neck, but the other part of me wonders if I’m getting what I want, like getting to finally check out the car crash that’s been keeping you on I-80 for four hours. The algorithm has the energy of a toddler with a chainsaw: loads of enthusiasm but no sense of responsibility.

When my parents were my age, the worst thing they might have accidentally seen was a dead squirrel on the side of the road. Personally, I wish I could say I’m above the lure of internet violence, but I’m not. I’ve been desensitized in ways my parents can’t fathom. In the last year of elementary school, a rather odd kid introduced me to a website called HoodSite.com, saying it was “interesting.” That night, I watched a man blow his head off with a shotgun.

I was in 5th grade.

And this is where you’re probably wondering, “But why do kids watch that stuff?” As if we’re all sitting in a circle passing videos around shooting the breeze. But shock spreads fast, especially in group chats, and people want to understand danger, but they don’t want to live it, like curiosity with a seatbelt on.

Locally, Truckee High isn’t exempt from this obsession either. A fight breaks out in the hallway? Phones are whipped out like a quickdraw, it’s in five groups chats within ten minutes, someone’s thrown the caption “ bro got rocked”  on it, and then there’s a girl on their story begging for the video. Before you know it, an ecosystem of people posting the worst things humanity has ever filmed in 4k is created, and a surprising amount are teenagers.

Everything that made old websites terrifying has now migrated onto platforms meant for children, hidden behind pastel colors and Artificial Intelligence. At least LiveLeak had the courtesy of making you type in the URL. Back then, in the “Grumpy Cat” era of the internet, death thrived on places like Rotten.com, Ogrish, and later LiveLeak, sites that wore their danger on their sleeve and eventually collapsed under a mix of legal pressure and cultural pushbash, no matter how “journalistic” their founders claimed the sites were.

Countries like the U.K. started criminalizing the possession of “extreme images,” Australia passed rapid response laws after the Christchurch livestream, and even Canada went after BestGore’s owner for hosting real murder footage. One by one, the titans fell, throttled by legislation, deplatformed by their hosts, starved of advertisements, or just quietly shut down. But now, it’s seeming to slip into the algorithmic bloodstream, sandwiched between dance challenges.

So what’s the point of this content at all? I think it varies. Some kids watch because everyone else is. Some watch because it’s visceral and “real-life” (whatever that means). Some watch because they’re curious, and curiosity doesn’t come with a content warning from our third parent, the Internet. Maybe the scariest part is that we don’t know what this stuff does to people long term. Desensitization? Anxiety? Probably. But right now, it seems to create a world where the extraordinary and the horrific can live in harmony, for better or for worse.

I don’t have the keys. I’m a student, not a senator with more loose skin than sense. But I know what hurts me: acting like this is normal. Because if our children can watch a video that would’ve ended entire website domains ten years ago and then flip to Minecraft tutorials, something needs to change.