This is The Guardian.
Today, what it's like being a teenager online in 2026.
I'm in the bright and airy kitchen of a house in the south of England and 15 year old Abby is showing me her phone and in particular a post on Instagram that came up in her feed.
What is it a picture of?
So it's like a video of a car with a huge sort of basket of flowers on it so obviously the flowers are being delivered to a girl and the caption is all this to a girl who let another guy crack for free by the way.
All this to a girl who let another guy crack for free.
Right, translate, translate for us.
Okay, so crack means to have sex with.
The way it works is that men do the cracking and women are cracked.
The moral of the story is that the man who's giving the flowers is like getting played essentially by the girl receiving them
because she's making him like pay.
for sex whereas another man got it for free okay and let's look at some of the comments underneath here yes so the top comment with 42 000 likes is one man's five year year relationship is another man's one night stand so essentially yeah saying that one man has to wait five years for sex
while another man gets in one night the second top comment is only untouched women deserve this untouched meaning virgin women okay which is disgusting only untouched women deserve flowers love yeah stop valuing women 2026 with 18 000 likes stop valuing women yeah abby tries to avoid this content actively following women she admires and looks up to but the misogyny always finds her I get quite a lot of feminist videos.
And so I got this video of a woman who was talking about her sexual assault.
The very top comment with over a hundred thousand likes is, who was your victim?
Which is just terrible.
You want me to read some more?
Yeah.
Must have happened in the dark.
Now imagine how your victim felt.