Having fears of something from 13 years ago when I was 21. Someone I was sexting with the profile mentioned she was a year older than me and I went on webcam. She cheated on me and claimed her 13 year old cousin changed it. My fears are what if the person I talked to was not really 22 but underage? The sex offender registry terrifies me. Never been contacted by police or anything like that, spoke to a laywer and my cousin whos a cop about it to a degree, basically he said they are really interested more in what is happening now and my friend told me that in most cases statute of limitations and that its a waste of time because minors get popups for live cams on adult sites and no one is prosecuted for that and the profile/pictures are of an adult so the assumption is the person in communication is an old. This has been causing me massive anxiety to search for legal cases involving this and it appears no statute of limitations exist on a federal level. This is assuming I actually broke any laws.

I have this same situation replaying in my head. It has to do with porn so if your young just know this may be a little graphic. I tend to use Twitter for porn and the reason I do this is it’s a lot more direct I can type in what I want to see and it’s there I don’t have to go through unknown websites and hope not to get viruses, and to be a little more specific more amateur/ real sexual experiences come up on Twitter rather than porn pages with staged written scenes. So in my use of Twitter for this there’s been times when questionable material/ illegal material has come up and never did I save it knowing it was 100% illegal or even interact with it if I knew it was 100% illegal. I was 18 or 19 at the time of this and I started to fear that in these moments I would look at these illegal videos/ sketchy videos to long when they would pop up like for example I remember seeing a video that was 100% illegal content and I was so shocked and like confused that I looked at it for a moment and then left and then I went back to look at it again just to confirm that I was seeing what I thought I was seeing I also remember seeing videos that were in a 18+ section but sometimes the girls in the videos looked like they could be 15-17. As we all know 18 year olds can look anywhere from 15-17 or even younger these days so I would be cautious and use my context clues and what I knew when watching videos that I was suspicious about but had no proof of them being illegal aside from my thoughts and the person looking young. So with this and me worrying I got super scared and hyper aware of what I was watching and now I remember me going back on Twitter to look at content that I was intending to be 18+ but all I would think about is what if something illegal would come up what if I see it and I look for to long or what if I feel attracted and I like it. And I just remember going back to Twitter to look at legal porn but it felt like I was there so that something illegal could come up to see how I’d naturally react to it. Never did I go and type in key words or type in anything illegal in fact I remember times I would strictly put 18+ next to whatever I was searching so I could be sure everything was legal but sometimes it would feel like my hope and intention was that I would see something illegal so that I could feel that anxiety rush or just to see how I would react naturally to seeing it and I feel like this would count as me intentionally looking for it so now I feel disgusting and like I committed a crime. Sometimes I just feel like I was only looking at porn because I wanted to feel that anxiety of what if something bad comes up and how would I react. I know deep down I didn’t want to see illegal content and that I was probably just feeling that I wanted to check how id feel if it did come up but now I feel like I was intentionally looking and that my whole objective was for something questionable to come up so I can see how I react. Is this ocd or did I just make a horrible decision?

So one day a couple months ago I saw some posts on threads pop up on instagram and they said I’m 17 and horny and 18 and horny or I think I even remember see a 16 year old one. I’m 20 and I remembered that when those popped up I clicked on them and I don’t know if I did it out of true attraction or out of the urge to make my anxiety go away. I feel like often times if I see something that says any number under 18 even if it has nothing to do with age it could be talking about season 17 of a tv show my mind immediately goes what?? 17??? And then I click on it to make my anxiety go away. So when I remembered all of this I downloaded the threads app because I wanted to see if I could get reassurance and see if I could rekindle how I felt in these moments. When I opened the app all I saw was posts like that but everyone claimed to be 18. The only problem is none of the girls looked 18 they looked like 14-16 so I started to panic I and worry that because I clicked on the threads in the past it popped up more and I was a pedophile for that. All of the accounts all pretty much had only fans links so at that point I was like well they have to be 18 then but now I’m worried that maybe it’s a scammer and they are using underage pictures of girls and putting them on onlyfans. Which I know is out of my control but I just feel like a Pedo and like I did something wrong. Does anyone have any advice? Or have any similar situations/ similarities with this?

18+ When I was in high school (16 or 17), I hung out with the popular kids of school... they send me this popular girl (who was in our school) explicit photo on snap because I was curious to see it... after I turned 19, I suddenly remembered my friends sent the photo and asked them to delete it off of the chat, as I didn't want to be in possession of any form of illegal material... Fast forward to later... my friend had broken up with his ex and wanted to send us explicit pics of her... curious at the time, I asked to see it and he sent the group (including me) some pictures... Now that Im 24, I remember him sending these pics and asked him to take down the pics in our snapchat convo... I didnt want any pics of their ex because this was harmful content... my friend, (the one who sent our friend group explicit vids and pics of his ex) told me that there was a one month period between him and her when they were in a relationship where he was 18 and she was 17 )... they were together for 1-2 years... and they were explicit throughout their whole relationship ... including the one month period... so i was getting extremely anxious and triggered about him sending me potentially illegal stuff... i think i misheard him say she was 17... but i cant remember if he said this or not... I asked him several times over the course of three days after he casually admitted he had a 1 month age period with her, (he was 18 and she was 17 during that one month) if she was over 18 when he made those videos, and he kept giving me answers like "Yes" And "It was a month after she turned 18..." He even got frustrated on the second day of me asking and said "Dude, this is the 10th time you've asked me and yes she was." On the third day I asked him, he said "yeah" when i said his previous comments of "a month after she turned 18, right?" back to him, and he even added that "we started getting more explicitly active around this time." He also told me "Even if she was under the age of 18, you wouldn't be in trouble because you were sent it." Yesterday, I called him again and apologized for asking so much... to which he responded... "I was hoping you'd realize this has been excessive..." But then I asked him if she really was 18 in those videos or not... he got frustrated and said... "Dude, you cant keep apologizing over and over, before asking me again..." Still, I asked him to confirm it for me one last time, to which he replied... "She was 18 in those videos..." I keep getting anxious because I dont know if he's lying or not and its triggering me really bad, not to mention feeling guilty about the harm I had caused... I genuinely feel so guilty and awful about this... I hurt people... and I cant sleep at night knowing I did... People say you make mistakes when you were a teen... these were some of my mistakes... I genuinely feel horrible and I cant sleep at night knowing the guilt of my actions are still there... I genuinely feel awful... I hope people dont hate me after reading this... i hope you dont block me... you've all been so genuinely kind and encouraging to me... and I dont want to lose someone who cares about me on here... (edited)