[edejong]

As his guardian you limit your son's ability to legally retaliate in the future against possible coercive actions offered by said corporations, with its sole intention to form an addictive dependency to its users.

It's like buying your son cigarettes. This shifts the responsibility from the supplier to the enabler (you).

Will we in the near future reflect on this digital period, similar to how we now reflect on the era of dominance of cigarette manufacturers?

[josephorjoe]

No one said being a parent is easy, but taking responsibility for these types of decisions is part of the job.

[edejong]

I triggered on "work around dumb rules". Large institutions consulted by legal and behavioural experts, backed by decades of research come to the conclusion to severely restrict the effects of persuasive design on children. Taking the time to reflect on both sides of the argument without dismissing it as 'dumb rules', would be my interpretation of responsible guardianship.

As we speak, persuasive design experts, applying behavioural psychology are having wreaking measureable, wide-scale deleterious effects on our youngest generation.

Yes, I agree we should teach our children about these systems of control. At the same time, we should acknowledge that the effects are spanning wide ranges of our population, regardless of age, sex, income class and education level. Our society needs stronger controls to counter decades of psychological and sociological research, designed and funded for offensive purposes (psy-ops).

[josephorjoe]

I hear you.

On the one side we have corporate interests looking to exploit everything they are not barred from exploiting and piously declaring that not exploiting things they are not barred from exploiting is failing in their mission.

On the other side we have governments trying with varying degrees of success to add regulations on this stuff that most lawmakers do not understand.

As a parent, you cannot just rely on the government. Some regulations are good. Some don't go far enough. Some are kind of dumb.

[FakeComments]

There’s never been anything like the mass psyops of the past 100 years, and it’s not clear that such toxic memetic behavior can coexist with society. We’ve only seen three generations of impact, but it seems the deleterious effects are outpacing our ability to adapt.

It’s possible PR will trigger a memetic mass extinction event.

I’d encourage people here who work in marketing, public relations, or social media to seriously consider the systemic effects of what they’re doing.