Comment by sagacity

16 days ago

This is like saying parents are at fault when a gun salesman sells a weapon to their 12 year old.

Not even “sell” but “give for free, constantly, every day, delivered directly to their house, disguised as a toy”

More like saying parents are at fault when a gun salesman enters their home every day, talks for hours with their children, and sells them weapons.

Have these parents tried to not let the salesman in?

  • The salesman is at their friends place. And is a prerequisite for soccer team meetups. Etc. You need most parents to cooperate to bar him... but yeah I guess being prudent at home helps.

    • I totally understand that "the salesman" is everywhere and that a single person can't fight against that, but he is everywhere because most parents are not blocking him in the first place, and that's exactly my point. Those are the parents that need to be blamed.

      In my first message I was not targeting those parents who try to block this but can't; I was targeting those parents that use Youtube to distract their kids since they are babies, those who give unrestricted access with no control at all, those who don't care. We all know people like that.

      This is just an hypothesis, but if parents were fined every time their kid accessed social media, I'm sure most kids wouldn't be on it.

      4 replies →

  • Your argument is conflating smart phones with social media apps and you seem to be assuming that kids wouldn't have access to their phone in other locations where they are unsupervised, subject to peer pressure, etc.

    The "just say no" argument, basically.

    • Devices and networks can be configured with parental controls, and the blockage doesn't need to be 100% effective. The kid accessing Facebook from a friend's phone 15 mins a day is tolerable, while giving them access to drugs or a gun 15 mins a day is not.

      There is also the education part that for some reason we are ignoring. Kids are going to be able to access drugs in locations where they are unsupervised, they are going to be subject to peer pressure, etc. The job of the parents is to prepare them for that, as they should prepare them for the negative effects of social media.