Youth-oriented Forum Guide

This page is an attempt to catalog some sites in order to help youth who are having trouble finding a community that both allows youth to register and accepts their feelings for children/younger teens.

Note: all sites listed here are both legal and accepting of discussion on a variety of topics.

One aspect of different sites that may be hard to capture using words is what a site's community and culture is like - things which differ across all internet sites. Because of this, it might be best to try multiple forums before settling on one or two with a preferred environment and culture.

With the exception of BoyChat, all forums the author is aware of have some age limit. The reasons for this vary by forum, and the most common reason sites have age limits relate to local laws, which often deem it illegal to knowingly allow individuals below a certain age to register.

Open MAP Community (OMC) - https://www.mapcommunity.org

Age limit is set at 15+ because of swedish law.

People with a diversity of beliefs are allowed, as is free discussion of any topic.

OMC has a chatroom-style format, with multiple rooms dedicated to various topics. Some examples: #general, #serious, #proposals, #introductions, #support-requests

Feedback from some OMC users:

"OMC has been a valuable support group to find others like myself. People talk about experiences without having to hide them. People who get it, understand it, experience it."

"I came to this site after being on other a MAP support sites for a few months. The people here are friendly and non-judgemental. They are willing to explain things to me, and not tell me that I’m not allowed to feel certain ways about my attraction. Thank you! You guys are awesome!"

"Having been in multiple online communities for childlovers, this one is one of my favorites because of it's lack of censorship and it's democratic structure (all changes are voted on by users who want to vote, users can make proposals, and anyone can engage in mod discussions)."

BoyChat - https://www.boychat.org

Users of any age can participate.

Boychat, or BC for short, is a site oriented towards people whose feelings are for boys, often referred to in the community as boylovers. The site has a traditional discussion-board format. It has a handful of boards for various topics. One for anything related to boylove, one for discussion of current events, and one for short casual posts. While boychat is themed around boylove, users are welcome regardless of gender preference.

Boychat has been around for over 25 years, and it's older-looking site design reflects this. It has a philosophy of letting users (rather than site admins) define the community and culture, which is described in it's FaQ page. Posts about all topics are allowed.

Boychat also has it's own page on this wiki: https://www.boywiki.org/en/BoyChat

Feedback from some BoyChat users:

"When I first found Boy Chat, I was in a state of euphoria. The realization that there were lots of people like me out there that weren't in the system for some crime just kind of overwhelmed me. So I asked some of the people who had interacted with me through posts to tell me about how they figured out what they were, what some of their experiences were, etc. The responses I got were more than I expected. And from posters that seemed to be respected and loved by all. One poster responded with his story of childhood and growing up. Another became my pen pal, as with others. But I guess that I was boring them, because they soon tired of writing to me. Oh, almost forgot the best friend of my life I met through Boy Chat. I am not really sure about where to go with all of this, so I will stop."

"For the past twelve years or more, I've been reading at least the headlines of the new messages on BoyChat almost every day. It is positive that over time you learn a lot of new things about the topic “minor” attraction: interesting books, controversies, political news, etc. The group of users is - at least compared to the Jungsforum in Germany - very large, so that you often get interesting answers even to difficult questions. It is also positive that you can, for example, spread links to relevant information here. BoyChat is one of the very few places where freedom of expression is respected when it comes to “minor” attraction. And BoyChat is one of the very few places where the madness pedophobia doesn't dominate, but rather is outlawed. The sometimes very rude and sometimes insulting tone of voice is negative. Some of the users are cold. naughty, vicious. You have to endure their comments and sometimes even their stalking if you get into an argument and want to continue to be active on BoyChat. My conclusion: Nice that BoyChat exists and hopefully there will still be BoyChat in 100 and 1,000 years."

Some longer (but no less informative) user feedback can be read in the replies to this post: https://www.boychat.org/messages/1576926.htm

Freak University - https://freak.university

A fediverse instance run by a youthlover. Accepts users 13+. Few restrictions on what can be posted, though some rules against prejudice based on things like homosexual or transgender status.

Fediverse is a decentralized social media structure. There are many fediverse servers, and users on any server can interact with users on other servers. This is similar to email - users on e.g. gmail.com and protonmail.com can email each other, despite having accounts registered on different sites. The format of posts itself is similar to twitter or facebook. It's much simpler in practice than in text.

Other forums with higher age limits & Further reading

There are also some forums that don't allow youth to register. These forums may be useful to know about for the purpose of using them when one is older.

- Visions of Alice (VoA) - https://visionsofalice.net

VoA is a girllover-oriented forum that allows discussion of various topics. VoA also has a community-written magazine (https://visionsofalice.net/ezine.htm).

- GirlChat - https://annabelleigh.net/

Girlchat is similar in format to Boychat, but only allows users 18+ to register because of local laws.

- Youjo Love - https://www.youjo.love/

youjo.love is another fediverse instance. It has few restrictions on what can be said or discussed. It's age limit is set at 18 for legal reasons.

More sites, many of which are not forums but informational, can be found at https://www.boylinks.org. All sites there are legal to the best of the author's knowledge.