LogFAQs > #975786221

Muscles posted...

How about parents actually parent instead of making the government do it for them?

Because corporations are constantly pushing the envelope as far as manipulative advertising goes, with children being a particular target for that because of how malleable they are. Keeping up with that to such an extent as to prevent mental health issues and other problems requires significantly more than just paying attention to your kids. It requires genuine effort to stay on top of emergent research (the same research corporations are using to advance their agendas) and a considerable amount of scientific literacy across multiple fields, all of which is far beyond what can be expected of the average person.

Yes, a lot of those problems can be mitigated by taking a more active role in your children's life instead of letting whatever technological babysitter is most relevant to the era we're talking about have unfettered access to their minds, but the problem runs a lot deeper than that. It's not going to be solved without some kind of organized effort to push back against and regulate it, because laypeople simply cannot be sufficiently equipped to keep up with the arms race. An organized regulatory effort is government.

Now, that's not to say that efforts from the government to regulate contemporary media tend to work. Most governments (especially ones as old as the US') are largely out of touch with current media trends and tend to operate more in terms of emotional rhetoric that appeals to voters instead of listening to subject matter experts to guide effective intervention strategies. That's a problem. But foisting the whole solution onto individual parents also isn't going to work no matter how many libertarian textbooks you spooge all over before making the suggestion.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

My usual stance is that any argument or proposition that involves "think of the children" as part of its justification is probably objectively wrong. Because it almost always is.

Conversely, however, letting that cynicism get in the way of recognizing and solving problems that genuinely are harming children is no less wrong. Yes, "think of the children" is almost invariably a shallow emotional appeal from people who have nothing more meaningful to say, but also the children should be thought of in instances where there is objective harm happening and something can be done to prevent that.