What would it be like to grow up believing the Earth is flat?

Growing up believing the Earth is flat means thinking you’re standing on top of a giant table that stretches out forever.

Imagine you're playing with your toys in your living room. You know the floor goes all around you, but you don’t see it ending, it just keeps going. Now imagine that whole world is like your living room, and you’re on top of it, thinking it’s a big flat surface instead of a round ball.

If you drew a map of the Earth, it might look like a square or a rectangle, just like the floor in your house. You wouldn’t see any edges or curves. When you travel far away, it’s like walking from one end of the room to the other. You don't feel like you're going around the corner, you just keep walking straight.

The sky might look like a ceiling above you, not like something that wraps around the Earth. When birds fly high up, they’re just flying toward the ceiling, not around the edge of the world.

You wouldn’t know that people on the other side of the Earth are upside down, because to you, the whole world is flat, and everyone else is just walking on their own giant table too!