I worked at a girl's summer camp for a month this year. One day we had a carnival, and there was a face painting booth, and pretty soon there were kids running with with all sorts of tumblr flags on their cheeks. The oldest were like 14. The youngest were 7 or 8. Most the tomboys had NB flags. Lotta pan flags. Some bi and gay flags, and the pink lesbian one. One was running around with a flag cape.

It was uncomfortable, but at the same time, I think it's definitely easy to overreact. Kids playing at being adults is as old as time, and it's ok. When I was in elementary school, kids had crushes, "date" (play tetherball exclusively with each other, bring each other gifts, and then dramatically break up a week later).

We also had an incident with 2 of the oldest girls, who were suspected were maybe a couple, and apparently that wasn't allowed at camp, and I also felt uncomfortable with that. As long as there wasn't PDA, sneaking out at night, or anything (and there was no indication of any of that) then I didn't see anything wrong with it, and "my first love was at summer camp when I was a teenager" feels like a very cute, classic, in many ways old-school story.

I guess to me, it came down to the difference between a kid privately thinking of themselves as bi, or telling some friends, and literally writing it across their face, advertising it for everyone to see. When I was a kid, at least, who you had a crush on was highly confidential info, only to be shared with your closest friends. It's not something you paint across your face for everyone to see. So clearly this wasn't about who they have crushes on: it's about social identity, it's a game, it's a way to be edgy or whatever.

I often said of those kids, "I just want to wash the internet right out of them."

Kids don't understand anything. They just hear about something fun or broadly "good" for whatever reasons they don't know and want to be it because they want to have fun and be good. If you tell them being a serial killer meant going around and making people happy, then they'd say they want to be a serial killer while having no idea what it actually means.