Meh, lets not.

In my experience, older people have to make conscious effort to maintain critical thinking and reasoning and not start lazily regurgitating settled, memorized opinions they've come rely on as absolutes, intead of allowing those beliefs to be subject to fresh challenges from novel perspectives that may change those opinions. Many do make that effort, and many do not. To paraphrase my favorite fictional character, if you refuse to change your mind, then you will die stupid.

Individuals are individuals of course though. I'm of the opinion that, on an individual basis, beyond the age of around 12, age is an extremely poor metric to estimate someone's intellect, wisdom, and insight. I'm in my mid 30s and have a master's degree in psychology with a 3.9 GPA. I recognize that there are 18 year olds that dwarf me intellectually, and more commonly 80 year olds who've lived lives devoid of reflection, who will die defending their long dead pappy's narrative about how the world works with anger rather than reason, solely because that's what they were told to believe. I have pity for that type, but very little patience.

It's so good because a lot of people have been waiting for a viable alternative to Reddit for half a decade or longer. It's non-corporate internet, the way it should be.

I remember shortly after the death of digg rage comics being peak humor and suddenly an influx of kids not understanding how to make a rage comic killing that sub.

It reminds me of the day the internet died, when so many new AOL users overwhelmed the forums at the time and killed all the etiquette that had formed up to that point. Internet been stagnant for longer than it should have been. I’m excited to see where things go now.

Maturity really isn't the same as age: plenty of legally adult people (many already so for decades) around who are anything but mature individuals.

That said, as others here I think the absence of the subtle pressures derived from commercialization and profit-seeking make most of the difference.

Also, I've been thinking about the possibiility that both those already in Lemmy before and the Reddit refugees who came in recently, are at the most principled end of the spectrum compared with those still in Reddit (whose principles on the subject of ultra-authoritarian top-down imposition as done in Reddit clearly aren't strong enough to make them try something else), possibly also more confortable with change. This might make the crowd here at the moment a self-selected bunch leaning significantly more towards a certain psychological profile than the average which in turn (or so is my theory) affects the dominant tone of discussions here.

I dont know, it feels like reddit still and it isnt much about age. Pseudointelligents are present, braggers present, ad-hominem enthusiasts present, fingerprinting my machine to death most likely present, i still fear getting banned for speaking my mind as in all english-language spaces so it will probably be my first and last post on this website if not for the omnipresent abusive and constantly angry mods on every community oriented site i had posted on that bullied me for me being me and high functioning but still autism Mixed feelings, but gatekeeping quality destroyers works, thats my experience and objective knowledge that it works, and some spaces have lower demographics by age than this place but are the cozy village with admin that doesnt exploit it. Its not about age its about maturity Lets sit and watch what is going to hatch of this site, my feelings are mixed

Do kids really impact the level of conversations on social platforms? Many adults are just as immature.

I'm not convinced.

The deep rock galactic subreddit got overrun by kids and their stupid, shit memes, long live Lemmy!

the kids are alright

The internet as a whole was much better when websites and services were not designed to cater to kids.

Huh... I just thought everyone here was just well spoken and kind

I hail from the days of BBS (Fidonet days), text based internet, email, Newsgroups (Eternal September Survivor), Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, now here. It's all about what you have to contribute, how you communicate, and how you present yourself.