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The speaker compares the behavior of her 8th-grade cousin, Kate, who is active on social media, with her 7th-grade cousin, Emma, who has limited access to screens and only uses YouTube. Kate acts more mature and is influenced by what she sees on social media, including inappropriate content and relationships. Emma, on the other hand, is interested in kid's shows, dressing up, and has no exposure to social media trends. The speaker believes that TikTok is the main factor shaping Kate's behavior and insecurities. The cousins have different interests and personalities, leading to tension between them. I have an 8th grader cousin who I talk to and hang out with on a good basis, like 1-2 weeks, and she acts exactly like people my age act. Mind you, I am 19, and she is 13. Most of us have had a form of social media with us every day since middle school or so. We all tend to have similar everyday schedules and media consumption, which is far indecisive of the person we are today. What I was able to discover is what difference it would make if someone didn't have any social media accounts, with the exception of being out on YouTube. I have two cousins, one in 8th grade, let's call her Kate, and the other in 7th, we'll call her Emma. These two cousins are on different sides of my family, but my 7th grader currently does not have a phone or social media account of her own, whereas my 8th grade cousin has been introduced to her social media account since she was approximately in 5th grade or so. When meeting my two cousins, you would have never guessed their age difference just by how they present themselves. Their parents, I want to say, are quite similar. They're both pretty outgoing, they're a little bit strict, but not too strict with the internet, of course. But they're not too different from each other, let's just say that. Emma, the 7th grader, she's been using her dad's old laptop as her source of entertainment from time to time. Her parents are a little bit more strict on screen time, as they believe an hour of online consumption will have a negative impact on their kids in the future. Even when Emma did have access to screens, such as her dad's laptop or the TV, she only used YouTube as it was the only thing she was introduced to, and her feed would consist of YouTube reactions, Minecraft creators like Aphmau, which creates a whole storyline into these one-hour long episodes, or something along the lines you'd think a 5th grader would watch. Or occasionally she would go onto Disney+, something similar, like Netflix, and watch Descendants or Miraculous Ladybug, anything that's stuck on the kids' show. But she's still interested in trick-or-treating, dressing up as characters from films she watched, such as, again, Descendants. She'll wear the wigs, the full-on costumes, everything like that. Even her comebacks are from a 2014 movie. They're pretty cheesy, and then if she were to go up to my other cousin and say the same thing, she would tell her peers. My 8th grade cousin, Kate, would definitely make fun of her in a way. Like, she'd be like, oh, is she serious? She's basically my age, why is she talking like that? But most importantly about Emma, she still wears colorful leggings, like she can wear hot pink, leopard print, whatever, and a shirt with cheesy quotes or odd patterns that a person would wear in 2014. And maybe it's because I've been giving her my hand-me-downs. But now onto Kate's upbringing. She has had a mini-iPad since, I want to say, 4th grade. And then she always used YouTube and an Xfinity count subscription that her dad had. It's still similar to what Emma has, but in 5th grade or so, that's when she got her own phone. She started using social media accounts like TikTok, Instagram, whatever is popular at that time, you know? So she was invested in that, and over time, which is two years, she got more involved into TikTok. And like everybody else, she was influenced by whatever she saw. And when searching for my clothes, trying to find clothes to give her as hand-me-downs, she would always deny the clothes that would end up going to Emma, but she would take my old crop tops, my old, you know, just revealing things that a person her age shouldn't wear. And whenever she's asking me some sort of advice or telling me her drama, whatever is going on, she will say some inappropriate stuff that I wouldn't even think that would even be in her mind at that time, you know? She would ask me, oh, is this what I should do in my relationship? And my, like, she would talk about something like, let's say fights, arguments, like where her and her boyfriend would talk about each other's jealousy problems, something like that. I don't know, it was really weird. But most of these problems that she comes to me about are the similar problems that my friends would come to me about. And this isn't, like, PG-13 stuff. This is, like, sometimes 3 to R, whatever. And I just think it's crazy that she's, like, trying to push that into her, or that's even being in her current relationship. Or even that her friends, they are, like, vaping, doing some type of, like, gummies, you know, like weed gummies. She even has a couple friends, or she knows people, I hope she's not too close to them, but she knows plugs. She knows people who sell drugs, like, a person that sells drugs in different forms to underage people, i.e., like, the gummies, edibles. But, yeah, when I would talk to Emma, it would be completely different. She would talk about, sometimes she even talks about, like, My Little Pony. She has her room. Her room is bright teal. She chose it last year versus Kate. She has this all-white room with LED lights, like, just all the things that a teenage girl would have. Emma still has her paintings that she put, that she drew in class, like, from 5th grade, something like that. And she would, like, you know, proudly present them. And my, again, my 8th grade cousin would be so embarrassed if she had that up on her wall. They don't really tend to interact with each other, just because, you know, different sides of the family. But when they do, it's, Kate always comes to me and complains. She's like, why does she act like that? Why is she talking like that? And then, like, why doesn't, doesn't, basically, why doesn't she act like me? That's what I want to say. The hidden meaning is in her conversation. And I really believe that, mainly, TikTok is the difference between how they act. Because, obviously, we see that Emma, she has no interaction, she has no idea what's on TikTok right now. She has no idea what's trending right now. And she still acts the same. She's not talking about insecurities, stuff like that. But Kate always talks about her insecurities. And she always talks about, like, stretch marks. She always recognizes, like, oh, I acted this way. And she'll overthink everything. And, honestly, when I see her posts on social media, it's something that I see every day. Like, what other influencers post. Like, she can be talking about her feelings. She can talk about how jealous she is. She can talk about her relationships. Stuff like that. And I still think that's completely bizarre for someone her age to be able to even have those problems. Whereas, Emma's biggest problem is finishing whatever homework she has. But, definitely.