[CountDrewku]

Well let's take a look at other media targeted towards younger children/tweens. How about Fortnite? They're training to children to be degenerate gamblers by tapping into base impulses of addiction. Any company that does this only does it for purposes of getting them hooked at a young age and hoping to turn them into future coffers. They're not doing it for altruistic reasons.

>It's fairly obvious that giving children a safe zone is still better than throwing them in the 18+ internet right?

Yes, but this shouldn't be done by a company that's only looking for profit. There's only so much that can be done legally to keep them away from these sorts of things and the rest of it HAS to be done by the parents. Children shouldn't have free reign of the internet and need guidance on what's appropriate and discussion on what they're seeing. I'm probably in the minority but I don't agree with just giving them smart phones/devices that just allow them to be connected to whatever they want 24/7 either.

[fungu]

What about fortnite do you believe is "training children to be degenerate gamblers"?

To my knowledge there is no "gambling" aspect of the game. Did you just randomly pick fortnite because other games have loot box mechanics and you assumed fortnite did too?

[CountDrewku]

Fortnite did have loot boxes until they were sued recently. https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/22/22295676/epic-games-fortn.... The ability to buy skins isn't much different really. Just because you know what you're getting doesn't mean there isn't an addictive aspect to purchasing skins etc. especially when they're advertised in a manner to elicit an aggressive "i need this" response.

Additionally, the actual game-play is made to be addictive and young children don't have the ability to keep this in check.

[kfrzcode]

Not just a specific game, but gaming culture in general, especially for the Gen-Z market, is steeped in microtransactions. I don't have specific citations but Adam Alter's book _Irresistible_ dives into this and other topics related:

https://adamalterauthor.com/irresistible

[ixacto]

While it might not make sense to give children smartphones, they will find a way to see what they want.

This is preferable to sheltering them until they go to college where it is all on display for obvious reasons.

One of my fondest childhood memories was figuring out how to get past the high school’s filtering software so we could get hotornot/MySpace/deviant art available.

Just remembered hotornot, kinda crowd sourced child/teen body-image shaming but it did help everyone develop a thick skin unlike today when parents try and micromanage their kids lives.