So I was talking to this girl through Instagram— not like anything major but just like “oh you’re cute haha” and then I found out she’s 16 and immediately told her I can’t flirt with her anymore but now I feel awful for even thinking like that before I knew :( I feel like a predator or criminal

I’ve been dealing with a lot of anxiety and uncertainty I think I’m really struggling right now. I was in my alone time (self pleasure) and obviously like whenever you’re doing your thing you might have fantasies or whatever and that’s what came into my mind in the moment and then all of a sudden I get a flashback from a scene from pretty little liars came into my mind where Emily kisses Ali on the neck. In pilot actor who played Allison was 12 years old, which the pilot was the first episode I believe but in the rest of the season of season one she was 13 and that flashback was in season one as well after the pilot and I’m really worried that I might have self pleasure to myself to that scene even though I knew all this time that she was 13 in that scene and I don’t feel comfortable because I’m 16 and even though like it’s not too much of an age gap it’s still polished me and I’m scared to death right now, but I didn’t panic immediately because I think I somewhat kinda knew in the moment that I probably didn’t do anything bad but I am not 100% sure and then the more I thought about it, I started to panic even more and now I’m panicking even more now and I feel like a really big pedo, and I keep searching and googling and trying to check for her age to see how old she was in that scene and I’m pretty sure she was 13 but I promise I wasn’t intentionally thinking oh yeah I’m gonna self pressure myself to this scene regardlessof her age. No, I’m just afraid I probably did without even like realizing or registering the thought in my mind, but then at the same time I kind of feel like maybe I was just coexisting with a thought and now I’m scared I’m really scared guys.

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?

when I was 15 soon to turn 16, I met this girl in a IG group chat made by our mutual friends. We started talking and eventually we started flirting and talking sexual towards each other, though eventually we stopped talking because she was being really weird. A couple months later In July of 2024 my friend found out that she was actually 13 and that she lied to me about her age. It's been 10 months since l've found out and I still feel so disgusted in myself. I had my suspicions at the time but I let them go since she said she was 16 turning 17. I was completely oblivious trusting someone I only knew online especially since i've never seen their face either. i'm struggling on what to do since i've been suffering with POCD since I was 15. Till this day I still feel weird and disgusted in myself because of that. But it feels ironic since i'm sexualizing someone that's 2 years younger than me and I waited to confirm she was around my age range to sexualize her. I feel so weird and guilty about it idk what to do