I will start this off by saying I am a teen (14) and have suffered a unstable upbringing in the events of my childhood (mother was abusive).
I have had unmonitored internet access from the age of I think 5, and for what it is, I at least didn't end up as bad as some others did.
I was born in the last generation that parents bought their kids toys and let them watch TV, so you could imagine I was pissed off as much as the rest of you are about young kids being in a tablet 24/7.
I grew up with older games and computers and the likes and therefore have developed a fondness for older games, music, website design, culture and whatever else (early 2000s to early 2010s), and I say that to give you context as to why I don't mindlessly browse social media like the rest of my generation does the way I've seen them. I browse forums, websites like this, chat with people on discord about likeminded stuff (trust me, I would love to use Matrix if all my friends did too) and I never fell for the social media bullshit despite how much pressure I get to fall into it because of every other kid I've known being literally dependent on it (Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok as of recently and I fucking hate them all with a burning passion for ruining my generation), Twitter is for the part of my generation that thinks they're "different" but essentially they're just the same exact shit with the added pronouns and pride flag profile pictures. I have read a lot and talked to people my age personally to understand what exactly it is that promotes derogatory mental health, and it's the fact usually that nobody cares anymore.
People harass over opinions about them harassing others, "diversity" being pushed to ruin mental health even more and make people believe things about them that aren't true at all and make it their entire personality, the music my generation listens to promotes violence, unrest, "making money" which is just putting profits over values, and "getting p*ssy" which is literally just objectifying women more than ever (I'm not even gonna talk about how much female rappers influence this), use of drugs like nicotine and marijuana is being pushed more than ever and I know people as young as 16 who literally depend on them, social media like TikTok is just prime ways to serve them propaganda and useless bullshit nobody cares about, On top of all that, they barely have any interests of their own due to the fact their free thinking has been impaired because they're all so used to being spoonfed content by a centralized media platform on a phone and I am so glad I didn't fall for any of that shit.
I love computers and stuff like Linux, I love old games (half life, doom, sonic, sims 2&3, team fortress, guitar hero), I listen to metal (Killswitch Engage is my favorite band of all time) and my free time is usually occupied by that or talking to my friends, and I guarantee you if you got someone else my age to try and write about this, they'd say back "bruh I ain't even tryna do all that right now this shit all cap".
School system, home life for my generation, etc are problems, but if anyone wants to hear my perspective on those issues please ask me in the replies.
Please excuse any dumb phrases, swear words or crappy grammar btw.