SLEEP TIGHT AND DON'T LET THE INTERNET BITE

I oozed out of my mother with the dark promise of a first and only daughter, adding stress to her world with my red cheeks and fleshy limbs.

TW: Mentions of self-harm, suicide, and sexual abuse

               Being born at the turn of the 21st century meant a lot of things—my mother’s pregnancy was tainted by 9/11 panic, I never learned what a floppy disk did (still haven’t), and the jaws of the internet became my unholy safe place. I oozed out of my mother with the dark promise of a first and only daughter, adding stress to her world with my red cheeks and fleshy limbs. I wish I could say I’ve been the perfect child, Ivy League and shiny, but I grew up playing with knives. 

               Fresh into third grade and book-hungry, I’d just devoured the Percy Jackson series after a mythology unit in class. Naturally, all of us nine-year-olds loved it­—I roleplayed Demeter on the playground in Freeze Tag of the Gods, where we could use our powers to thwart each other’s pursuits. I plunged through the tales for the safe space they provided, obsessed with the taste of somewhere else. When I finally finished tearing through Riordan’s original series and all its auxiliary universes, I couldn’t shake an undying hunger for more; there’s something so tantalizing embodying a superhuman, even if for a volume at a time.

Unwilling to accept the end of my escapist experience, I went surfing on my iPod Touch to hunt for a possible sixth installment of the series. As I scrolled through the first page of Google results while sitting innocently on our rickety toilet, I noticed a small description under a blue hyperlink: PERCABETH - While Percy’s parents reconnect, Percy and Annabel embark on a journey to… 

I paused, reading each word carefully. I didn’t remember this demigod-boy monster-slayer series turning into unabashed romance, but­—hold it, could this be a prequel? I excitedly clicked the link to fanfiction.net, not realizing how quickly I would lose my innocence. 

               I was greeted by intense descriptions of Poseidon and his “throbbing member” imploring Percy’s mother to “go for a ride.” I sat dumbfounded on the porcelain seat, face flushing hot red as I encountered something that felt forbidden. I had no idea what they were actually describing besides the fact that they were touching each other’s privates, oh god—

               I hit the back arrow on the browser and deleted the tab, then cleared my history altogether. I’d never heard of any birds or bees, but I at least knew people shouldn’t be touching their no-no squares together. If my parents caught this, I’d never get my iPod back. Oh god, oh god, oh god. 

               My fear of being found out never manifested, but instead of taking refuge in unnoticed transgression, I felt unshakably curious about this newly discovered world of fiction. I turned back to my iPod a few days later and searched for something new: “Percabeth fanfiction.” Google flooded me with content, sweet and sultry alike. I felt dirty. I felt alive. 

               It pains me now to say that my first understanding of sex was internet-textual, but I’m not alone in my cyber humiliation—in a piece on Gen Z and their internet childhood, journalist Jerica Barkley explores the consequences of unbridled internet access, explaining how kids normally enter the internet with innocent ambitions. We’d crawl in pursuit of silly games or GIFs or YouTube videos, not knowing what stood on the other side of the wrong keyword. Nevertheless, trouble arises upon realizing how many artistic platforms aren’t as innocuous as they seem: for example, DeviantArt, which advertises itself as an online image gallery and community, actually doubles as the host of adult fetish content––and this is just one forum of out too many to count. Barkley further explains how “kids were often exposed to erotica and pornographic content” when trying to look up some fun snaps of their fictional heroes, leaving instead with images of the inappropriate and incomprehensible. Sounds a little too familiar to me.

               But even more disturbing than children bumping into surprise-porn is children participating in surprise-porn through online grooming. After I started getting more comfortable with my online presence across multiple websites, I found myself in the middle of a community of friends I’d never met. I had pals in Orlando, Baltimore, and even some in Scotland. But I got cocky with safety, and during the summer after I’d turned 11 years old, I successfully secured my very first internet girlfriend who was twice my age. 

              “Hannah” and I mostly communicated through Kik, an instant messaging app that boomed throughout the early 2010s and fizzled into disuse after the rise of iMessage and WhatsApp. For those of us who were cyber-babies, Kik represents a special kind of evil. Its focus on anonymity allowed crimes to fly under the radar, and encrypted chat logs could float away into the ether with every phone reset. When you search up the platform now, you’ll find a search engine rife with articles on the commonality of sexual harassment from child predators within the creepy confines of Kik rooms. But to me, Hannah was a long-distance princess, and Kik was the sword slaying the continental dragon between us. We bonded over our love for One Direction, and when I told Hannah I was only 11, I was terrified that she’d spurn me in favor of someone her age. Nevertheless, she wasn’t deterred by my adolescence—she even felt comfortable enough to let me top during our steamy roleplay “sexting.”

               Hannah would also threaten to kill herself every now and then, just to keep me on my toes. I remember long nights spent under my covers, iPod held to my face in panic as I tried desperately to convince her that there were reasons for staying. She’d send me gory pictures of her self harm and scars, sometimes spurting incoherent keyboard smashes when she’d lost too much blood. 

And when I found out that Hannah had another girlfriend on the same site where we’d met, whom Hannah had apparently told she was 19 years old instead of 22, my little self decided that I couldn’t be in a relationship of lies anymore. I told her I didn’t love her the same way, to which she responded by attempting suicide again. At this point, I was pretty sure that everything was fake, so I half-heartedly Kikked my answers as the “medic” who came to take Hannah’s supposedly deflating body texted me on her behalf. I squirmed through the green chat bubbles, fighting the urge to believe my girlfriend’s messages: “Hello, this is the EMT at the scene. Hannah is babbling nonsense in the back of the ambulance right now, but she keeps begging me to pick up her phone text Jana that she loves her very much and always will.”

               I cut contact with Hannah shortly after, and I eventually blocked her on Kik. She’d make different accounts to leave vague messages in my fanfiction inbox, but these ultimately died down as she (he? they?) resumed her own toxic life. Of course, my biggest revelation wasn’t that I’d been groomed or abused, but that I’d been lied to. But I was still naive and young, so it was easy for me to jump into a relationship with a 16-year-old (better, but not good) girl from the midwest within a few months of our breakup. 

               I got passed around a few different platforms before giving up my fanfiction site presence for good. I kept contact with a few friends, but most of them slipped down the drain of time and distance, probably for the best. And it wasn’t until a therapy session a few months ago that I realized the gravity of the situation. My doctor’s immediate words were “Jana, that’s sexual abuse. And emotional abuse. You were abused.” 

               I never saw the situation as abusive until now, largely because I felt responsible for the situation. I’m the one who asked Hannah to be my girlfriend, and I’m the one who initiated “sex” half the time. I’m the one who pushed so hard for the relationship despite our age gap. But, as my therapist reminds me, I was a child. What I thought I wanted wasn’t actually good for me, and stories like mine are why there are laws in place to protect children from predators. 

               In her insightful essay “The I in the Internet,” writer Jia Tolentino emphasizes how the online world “is defined by a built-in performance incentive… you can’t just walk around and be visible on the internet—for anyone to see you, you have to act.” This means the internet isn’t just a double-edged sword—it’s a flail. I was able to misuse the internet by presenting myself as someone older in order to gain attention, which ultimately put me in danger. Then Hannah engaged in the same misuse in a much worse way, introducing herself with various ages and shifting details before grooming a young girl. And this expands beyond the confines of dark chat rooms—influencers puff themselves up with their brand-like personas to the point where their figures seem more mythical than human, distorting our perceptions of what is socially and aesthetically acceptable.

While there are many aspects of the internet we all enjoy (and this is coming from a chronic doom-scroller), the existence of online predators shouldn’t be ignored. It should be regarded as something deeply concerning and desperately in need of intervention. As someone who has been sexually and emotionally manipulated on the internet, the steadily climbing statistics of such forms of cyber-child abuse paralyze me with anxiety. I’m old enough to not be a target anymore, but the thought of millions of kids meeting their first Hannah scares me dead. This shouldn’t be happening, but how do we monitor the freest place on Earth? 

               There are no easy answers to this question, but all I can do is protect the children I’ll have when I’m ready. I don’t think a prohibitionist approach would do the trick either, since telling a child not to do something usually inspires the opposite sentiment. A good step is educating young people about the dangers of the internet, no matter how much they think they know. We should tell our small children from the moment they’re able to work a screen that there are creeps online who don’t have their best interests at heart. Even though this seems like an intuitive step, it’s one that I was never walked through. I can’t blame my parents for not knowing—after all, we were barely a decade deep into the digital feast before I was born. Maybe if I’d been born a few years later, I would’ve been more wary of adults online, instead of seeing myself as an adult undercover. 

               I’m all sorts of fucked up now, considering how I sometimes dissociate during sex and occasionally mistake cougars for kittens. But when I snap back into my recovered reality, I realize how badly Hannah impacted me during the most formative years of my life. I realize how deeply terrible and terrifying grooming can be and how its effects on me will continue to bubble up for years to come. To this day, I’m still working through my past—Hannah is just one piece of an ugly puzzle. 

AUTHOR: Jana Kelly

ARTIST: Avery Li