why is gen z so sensitive to small age gap relationships?

These were people trying to follow a sick ticktock trend for committing violence on others. 

Everything else was just an excuse for hurting someone, may they all go to jail for assault. 

After you turn 18, who dates who is none of my business.

I was just about to post this. It’s one thing if it’s a 38 year old trying to get a 19 year old to move in with him in order to completely reshape her life to suit his preferences but this is ridiculous.

ETA: when I was younger I got hung up on age gaps in terms of who I chose to date, but one day I just asked my parents when talking about my love life “as long as we’re both adults, dating someone 5 years younger isn’t a big deal right?” And they said no, and since then, due to my mother being obsessed with MeToo type stuff, I haven’t worried about it since. I’m not sure I would ever be interested in, say, a 15+ year age gap but I’m comfortable with typical age gaps in my love life.

**PSA: the people that pose as minors online to “catch” predators don’t actually care about catching predators. They’re just looking for a legal excuse to beat the shit out of someone.**

I just hope everyone involved are thrown into jail and have to pay a massive settlement to the dude

I would say it’s mostly just Redditor’s that have a problem with it. All my friends IRL see no problem with an age gap of 4 years to 8 years as long as the people are happy.

E.g. my friend’s sister is 24 and is dating a 45 year old with one daughter who is like 12…? To all of us that’s weird…

In the US it’s weird to see a 28 year old date a 18 year old, but that because the 18 year old has just been gave privileges to start adulting. 28 year old dating a 21 year old, I wouldn’t bat an eye. It’s all about maturity or persevered maturity….

Is this actually real? Like is there a police report? What University? When did this happen?

All adults so police report should have ID’s etc.

Cause…
?width=1594&format=png&auto=webp&s=b28a628c181d86cccc19a08a87617746510fd0ad

Edit apparently it is. And the local news does a much better story than whatever this was.

[https://local12.com/news/nation-world/students-allegedly-attempt-tiktok-frame-man-sex-predator-in-how-to-catch-a-predator-stunt-chris-hansen-cincinnati-grandmothers-funeral-tinder-dating-romance-app-allegations-condemn-abhorrent-mission-values-mob-attack-underage-social-media](https://local12.com/news/nation-world/students-allegedly-attempt-tiktok-frame-man-sex-predator-in-how-to-catch-a-predator-stunt-chris-hansen-cincinnati-grandmothers-funeral-tinder-dating-romance-app-allegations-condemn-abhorrent-mission-values-mob-attack-underage-social-media)

and even better.

[https://www.masslive.com/news/2025/01/5-assumption-university-students-charged-after-faked-to-catch-a-predator-assault.html](https://www.masslive.com/news/2025/01/5-assumption-university-students-charged-after-faked-to-catch-a-predator-assault.html)

I think we are just practicing some sort of self-defense and lying to ourselves about the reason why we don’t like the age gaps. Men don’t like other men dating younger because they “take” the women in their age gap and in some cases because of paternalistic feeling towards younger women (sisters and daughters) and women don’t like either because they don’t want men to have the chance to “replace” them with younger ones.

I had this same question myself. I am not Gen Z (sorry), but I am not that far off. “In my day”, an 18 and 22 year old was something only the most concerned of adults worried about – nobody in my friends circle thought that was problematic. Hell, I dated someone with a similar age gap at those ages, as the younger party. Years later, with the benefit of hindsight, it was one of the best relationships I ever had. The fact that, roughly a decade later, people would be freaking out and calling my boyfriend a pedo for dating me at almost those exact ages would have blown my mind at the time – we were college kids together!

I think there are three things going on here.

1. It’s pretty well established that there is now a “prolonged adolescence” where many teens and young adults are doing things later. Later drivers’ licenses. Later sex. Smoking used to be 18+, now apparently it’s 21+? When I was growing up, it was still pretty common for folks to move out at 18, despite it being the Great Recession and the worst economy since the Great Depression. Now it’s apparently common for young adults to live with their parents until nearly 25. The trend of helicopter parenting, even of college age kids, has gone through the roof. I have my thoughts on whether this is or isn’t harmful, but that’s beside the point. It can’t be hard to see why treating young adults as children later might cause them to think of themselves as “basically a baby” at 18.
2. From what I heard, there is apparently more of a trend of people hanging out in more same-age circles than before. When I was in high school, I had a group of friends ranging from sophomores in high school to sophomores or even juniors in college. (Max age range between the youngest and oldest was 5 years, though smaller between any two given members). We all got along fine, some of us liked each other better than others as per any friend group, but all of us had something in common. To this day, some of my closest friends are from that group. When I say that to people, quite a few people are surprised, like they can’t imagine even hanging out with someone in college when they are in late high school.
3. Finally, maturity exists on a bell curve. That means that immature people have always existed. The people who I hear saying stuff like “18 year olds are literally babies! How someone at 22 can look at one and not think, they’re literally a child – they must be a pedo” aren’t really the most functional people IRL. These people will also say stuff like “when I was 18, I was calling mom five times a day to ask her for help with everything” – that is, if they even moved out of their childhood bedroom at 18 to begin with. The people who have an issue with this stuff are largely sheltered and often infantilized folks who seem to struggle with some fairly basic things, and who therefore think every 18 year old is like that and wildly easy to take advantage of. Whereas someone who moved out, was paying bills, going to college, and living fairly independently at 18 has more in common with someone who is 21 (minus being able to legally drink and smoke) and isn’t fussed.

I do agree that it’s good that we’re no longer normalizing 40 year old creeps preying upon barely-legal 18 year olds with the intention of trying to get them pregnant, moved in together and molding them to be the perfect version of what they want before they had a chance to live their own lives. But there is a trend of overcorrection towards blowing very small and normal age gaps way out of proportion.

ETA: Factor 4. There are quite a few people who say things like “they can’t even drink or smoke, what does a 22 year old who can have in common with them”. These are people whose lives probably began to revolve around going to the bar and club as soon as they turned 21, and who lived quite the hard party life in their early 20s, who can’t imagine anything else. For most other folks, who probably drank underage to some degree and who didn’t start living at the bar as soon as they turned 21, they might have a lot in common with someone who can’t or doesn’t drink, if drinking isn’t their main life focus.

For years there’s been a big push online for “kill pedophiles!” Its everywhere, on car stickers, shirts, etc. People want an excuse to commit violence & since pedophilia is universally considered monstrous people flock to calling for violence against pedos.

People (especially Americans) fantasize about hurting others. We all know someone who’s talked about how they can’t wait for someone to rob their home so they can shoot them. So now we have these vigilantes catfishing strangers because they wanna hurt them. They don’t actually care about helping victims or teaching young people about consent or respecting boundaries. They just wanna feel strong by making someone else bleed

100% certainly that in a few years everyone involved in this is gonna claim the victim was a pedophile & portray themselves as heroes.

Is this another gender war thing or is it all age differences that get criticized?

Is it just dudes disapproving of other dudes?

>it seems like people 18-24 are greatly infantilized

Seeing this stupid behavior certainly doesn’t help their case…

Why is TCAP trending? Have these dumbshits not thought through what a terrible idea it was (and still is) to blur the lines between justice and *entertainment*? Do they not know why the series ended? If you guessed because one of the stars predictably committed suicide, you win!

I’m looking at the trend of Zoomers not fucking and can’t help but feel that this perception about what constitutes a predatory relationship stems from incel envy.

People love sticking their noses in other people’s lives. It gives people a sense of purpose I guess.