[luckylion]

I'm here for the cynical take: the size of the issue depends on whether it's successful. Lots of childhoods suck, and lots of parents make bad decisions.

"My childhood was made into content and all I got was this multi-million dollar inheritance" doesn't sound too bad. Plenty of people have worse childhoods and don't get a penny.

[soiler]

The implication of your take is that we should exploit children as much as possible because it might pay off big, as long as we don't cross the line into "worst childhood of all time".

[luckylion]

Not quite (because the chance of success is very small), but if you're a successful influencer and then exploit the fact that you have children for even more growth, the trauma is probably small and the therapy is easily covered with the amounts of money you're making (which makes SWE salaries look tiny in comparison).

It's not positive, but it's "I have a splinter in my finger" relatively to what many (most?) children experience who don't grow up in the top 1%.

There's another post on the front page currently about over 100 kids who were illegally employed in hazardous jobs, and yesterday we had an article about laws being proposed to remove the hourly limits on child labor. I think the children affected by those things would prefer to have had their face on their mommy's instagram and never have to work a day in their life over working in a meat sanitation plant from their 13th birthday on.

It's all relative, but I guess that's an unpopular opinion. Maybe most here feel closer to the kids on instagram than those in the meat packing plant.

[PuppyTailWags]

I think you're misunderstanding the realistic state of child influencers. These children have no guarantee of access to any money they "earn", and also the chance of earning that much is quite low. Just like most influencers, most of them don't make anywhere near a fulltime income an adult could make even on minimum wage, but are left with lifelong distortions of how to be a person that have to be unlearned.

I don't think it's reasonable to excuse or downplay exploitation of children in one way because exploitation of children occurs another way elsewhere. We can argue against addressing harm to children because other harm happens to children all the way down to the source of Omelas's good fortune if you like, but I don't think this results in positive societal outcomes.

[hackinthebochs]

>but are left with lifelong distortions of how to be a person that have to be unlearned.

"Lifelong distortion" is a strong claim that hasn't been demonstrated. I wonder how much of this consternation for kids being present online is a generational thing. People from the generation where privacy was the default are reacting badly to the movement towards no privacy being the default. Of course, those from the old generation take it for granted that their way of living is the right way and the alternative is "distortion". I'm also from that generation and I cringe at how easily people destroy their own privacy. But I don't make the mistake of assuming this emotion has normative value. The world is moving to a social-media infused existence. Being a digital luddite isn't obviously the superior lifestyle. Preventing kids from making the most of it isn't obviously in their best interests.

[pseudalopex]

The discussion was not about children being present online or choosing a social media career. It was about parents making those decisions for children. Including children who did not want it.

[brightlancer]

> I think you're misunderstanding the realistic state of child influencers.

I think their point is that you and many others are underestimating how bad a "normal" childhood can be.

[soiler]

I don't think working in a meat-packing plant is comparable to being used by influencer parents, but that doesn't mean the latter is small potatoes. They're very different situations.