It sucks what happened but it's important to realize that this is a pretty rare occurrence. There are a lot of famous people and most of them don't have someone turn up to their house with a shotgun at any point. News seeks out the sensational but keep in mind that it is sensational because this is an outlier. And even the individual affected by this incident apparently considers the platform to be worth the risk, since she is still active on there.
Everyone's a risk manager until they have to do it every day, and then they find themselves constrained by last week's fears to the extent that they can no longer leave the house without a haz-mat suit, armed bodyguard, and one-way plane ticket to a remote village in Switzerland
I totally understand that some people would not choose to make the tradeoff, and they are free not to. Inherently, anyone broadcasting video of their everyday life is going to be doxxable if they are not extremely careful about how much information they are putting out. The sunshine laws in this case may have helped but I don't think we know that. The article doesn't mention them at any rate.
It’s very difficult to estimate the ballpark of how many cases that victims are disincentivized from reporting happen on daily basis. This includes countries that are perceived as “low crime”, like Japan and UAE.
IMO the issue is that people are attracted to these platforms for the ad-money and attention of an audience, but the extent to which you open yourself up to harassment and stalking is only understood after-the-fact.
If only social media hadn't enforced real name policies, it might be a little easier to stay anonymous while still being a content creator, maybe its different in other countries.
Edit: Facebook and Google+/Youtube had or have real name policies, before then it was the norm to never reveal your real identity online, I admit I am ignorant to TikTok policies, but apparently sharing your venmo address is not uncommon.
> the extent to which you open yourself up to harassment and stalking is only understood after-the-fact.
Some things are hard to learn the easy way. In any case, as I observed, the tradeoff seems worth it to the subject of the article and her family, even now they are made forcefully aware of the possible downsides. Perhaps it ultimately will not be but I personally don't feel like I'm in a position to dictate how they should balance the risks and rewards of stardom.
Social media didn't enforce real name policies, Facebook dot com did. Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, the right-wing sites-- none of those (nominally) require you to divulge PII to open an account (although try opening a Twitter account in $currentYear and see how long you last before they lock your account for 'unusual activity' until you provide both a phone number + e-mail address)
The article said that the stalker got her personal details by paying people who were closer to her. In one case he did math homework for a classmate who knew her in exchange for information. A pseudonym doesn't help much if people who know you in real life sell you out.
A fan going to their star’s house with a weapon is rare.
A man stalking and becoming obsessed with a specific woman, spending time and effort for sex and attention despite the woman clearly not being interested, is surprisingly common.
Many, many woman have real-life incidents of men literally stalking them, men repeatedly trying to get their attention / ask them out despite blatant “stop talking to me” rejection, and men getting really aggressive when they get rejected or “emasculated”. On games and social media it’s much worse, to the point where basically anyone who reveals themselves to be female gets creepy messages. You just don’t realize because relatively this stuff almost never happens to men, even attractive men.
Go on a sub like r/NiceGuys, r/TwoXChromosomes and you will see a ton of examples. But even random subs like r/AskReddit and my college’s sub have multiple stories because it’s so common. It’s actually a very serious issue in nearly every society, and this incident is an (albeit extreme) example of the persistence and aggressiveness most semi-attractive women experience.
> A fan going to their star’s house with a weapon is rare.
> A man stalking and becoming obsessed with a specific woman [is common] . . .
I recognize the truth of what you're saying, but I also just want to point out that the discussion is about the former situation, not the latter one. Otherwise there wouldn't be these vague intimations that something is wrong with Tiktok in the NYTimes piece.
> A fan going to their star’s house with a weapon is rare.
If your denominator is fans, yes.
If it is stars, not so much.
> You just don’t realize because relatively this stuff almost never happens to men, even attractive men.
Yes, it does, and not just conventionally attractive men. You don't realize because men have less social support for discussing it when it happens to them, and you mistake relative visibility for relative frequency.
> “I wasn’t sending anything of my body," Ava said. “It was just pictures of my face, which is what I assume that he was paying for. My whole thing is my pretty smile — that’s my content.” She said Mr. Justin paid about $300 for two photos, via the Venmo digital wallet app.
If you're a parent out there, that should be the biggest red-flag possible. I'm not one to advocate for total control over your family's online interactions, but if a ball like that starts rolling, you need to have a serious sit-down conversation with your teen about boundaries and what kind of crazy, obsessed people there are in the world. Feeding their cycle of obsession should be a non-starter for any guardian out there, and I'm frankly surprised to learn that her father, a former police officer, didn't start asking questions after $300 hit her bank account.
People used to call the tech industry a "brave new world" of finance and commerce. Influencer culture is a whole different level of psychological horror, though.
1. It's just "buy me a coffee" but for TikTok, it's not weird until creepy adults make it weird. One creator I follow gets a bunch of people sending her $0.69 for the memes. Lots of people use Amazon wishlists for this too. People with artistic talent will sell merch on Etsy/Redbubble.
2. Oh honey, I will make no claims about anyone but myself but I did this kinda shit when I was that age. I realized I was hot, I was a sponge for attention, and too stupid to realize that having older guys hitting on me and buying me stuff wasn't as cool as I thought. Amazing in hindsight that nothing bad ever came of it.
Not exactly my kind of thing, but a friend of mine was selling pictures of her feet and making six figures (she started when she was 17!). Men and women just live in completely different worlds in their 20s and 30s (until serious relationships/marriage). It's insane to me that anyone would pay for OnlyFans, private Snaps, etc. But here we are, it's literally a billion-dollar-a-year marketplace.
>Men and women just live in completely different worlds in their 20s and 30s (until serious relationships/marriage).
It's important not to overgeneralize, we're talking only about the 99th percentile of men on the desperation scale, and the 99th percentile of women willing and able to profit from them. Despite what you read on the internet most people still have normal relationships! Constructing your worldview from the 1% most extreme forms of human interaction will, in so many words, make you crazy.
I think that depends on one's specific definition of different worlds. I thought it was a reasonable expression since men and women have very different experiences which are pervasive in the culture.
For example, "going dutch" is getting more popular, but generally men are still expected to buy drinks or pay for dinner. Women have to be more careful about date rape than men. And so on.
This is a ridiculous response to a commonplace observation. Men and women have enormously different experiences in the dating market. 99th percentile encounters are the entirety of romantic interaction. Outside societies that have rigid sex segregation well over 99% of all interaction with potential romantic partners is non-romantic.
The grandparent's example of a different world wasn't the guy picking up the check, it was making six figures by doing something virtually nobody does.
There are lots of areas where men and women live in different worlds. Dating is one of them. The strongest female athlete might be slightly stronger than an average man in terms of grip strength [1]. The best women’s soccer team in the world can’t beat a club side of 15 year old boys[2]. A sub 200 ranked man beat the top 2 women tennis players back to back.
The average man’s and woman’s dating experience are disjoint. The problems the other faces are alien because they don’t come up. Women don’t have any problems if they want to have sex. Men who want to get married and have children do not go looking for long if they’re actually looking.
I appreciate that you're trying to approach this topic scientifically but it's a giant nonsequitur to go from references about soccer team performance to dating. If there's a difference in dating experiences I don't see how you're going to uncover it with those citations.
To add, Venmo doesn't allow anyone under 18 to sign up. It must have been their parents' venmo perhaps, or they lied signing up and due to the empty credit report the venmo system assumed the birthday was correct, also contributing that birthday back to the credit bureau.
Going by her father's quote in the article, once her parents realized how much money she could make, they found a way to make peace with the risk of injury and death. Remember Judy Garland and what she had to go through to get autonomy over the wealth she earned as a child actress? Being a parent, i.e. being a fertile member of a breeding pair capable of bringing a child to term and then keeping it alive until launch day, does not necessarily equate to moral purity.
> But Ava’s parents allowed her to sell Mr. Justin a couple of selfies that she had already posted to Snapchat.
They were aware and allowed it. But, not knowing the family's financial circumstances, it raises a difficult question of where to draw the line with this kind of thing. The prospect of allowing your underage daughter to sell media featuring her to this kind of guy is sickening, but if $300 is a lot of money to your family, maybe it becomes easier to excuse? What do you do if he offers $10,000 for something else that's even more disturbing, and you're behind on your mortgage payments?
I'm disappointed the author of the piece didn't come right out and say that what TikTok is doing is profiting off of the sexualization of minors (of course the minors get a cut as well, so that apparently makes it okay?). It seems like the only moral path forward would unfortunately be to ban minors from participating, or keep them reaching the levels of fame that would result in them putting themselves (or their families) in a position to have to make the kind of choice I'm talking about above.
I would be concerned to learn my young daughter had a serious online following where her content consists of photos of herself where 3/4 of the followers are boys/men. To be blunt, they are allowing their daughter to whore herself out even if she may not realize it. It is shameful and will ruin her just like every other child star.
I am grateful that my parents denied me access to video games and I will strictly deny my children access to content deem counterproductive. You're not making friends you're making a human being. The idea that a child needs social media or a controller to have a social life is a weak argument made by lazy parents. I feel sorry for this girl and shame on her parents and parents like them.
I get where you're coming from, and it's a nice thought that you could simply "go nuclear" and forbid a teenager from using social media to avoid this kind of thing.
But if you did this you would also be denying your kid access to virtually their entire cultural universe. How would you feel if as a kid you weren't allow to see any of your friends outside of school? Watch any of the same movies, music, or play any of the same games as your peers? It would almost be another form of abuse in and of itself. Unfortunately your suggestion isn't really tenable, just ask any actual parents of teenagers if they could imagine taking this route.
Western parenting has gone completely off the rails if people are comparing banning kids from using social media to a “form of abuse.”
Human beings don’t have fully developed brains until age 25. Controlling kids’ interactions with other humans with underdeveloped brains is like the most critical part of parenting.
I’ve got three. Studies show that the strongest influence on kids are their peers. Problem is that kids are dumb and irrational—again, undeveloped frontal cortex and with teenagers, hormones—especially in groups. As a result, parents need to carefully control both who their kids socialize with, and the nature of those social interactions. Social media compounds those problems.
Permissive parenting that treats kids like little adults and over-emphasizes cultivation of their individual relationships and preferences does them a disservice. It’s like letting a drunk person drive a car.
> Studies show that the strongest influence on kids are their peers.
Could you please share? The ones I'm finding say that parents are the strongest influence [1] [2] [3] [4].
> Permissive parenting that treats kids like little adults and over-emphasizes cultivation of their individual relationships and preferences does them a disservice.
Parenting that attempts to "carefully control" interactions until their 25th birthday seems like a disservice of equal size. I met some of these kids when I got to University. They didn't fare very well without their parents to control everything. As with most things, the answer is likely in the middle.
There's no need for this, since parents entrust schools to supervise their children (read: control their interactions) during the school day. Outside of school, making sure you know whom your child is hanging out with, where they are, establishing a curfew, and other such limits are all generally hallmarks of good parenting.
There are obviously limits to the degree to which parents can/should control their kids, but not allowing a kid to interact with strangers on the internet falls well within them. Knowing (and controlling) which of your child's peers they are communicating with is no different from keeping tabs on which home your child is visiting (and staying in touch with friends' parents wherever needed), or which of their friends they're hanging out with at the mall.
I was compelled to chime in on this thread because it resonates with me, personally. I'm an Indian raised by immigrant parents, and growing up one of the most stark observations I made was just how coddled my American friends could sometimes come across — they could more or less get whatever they wanted or do whatever they wanted. My parents established boundaries over the kinds of games I played, whom I hung out with, and the activities I partook in. Not being able to get what you want sometimes, or do what the "cool kids" are doing is just a part of growing up for lots of people. I wouldn't call it "abuse", and that kind of discipline definitely set me up for success in the real world. I continue to have a great relationship with my parents, and intend to raise my children with the same kind of discipline.
This is why parents choose private school, or “good schools.” It’s a proxy for controlling your kids’ social circle. Mine are too young to go anywhere without me, but when I was growing up my parents insisting on personally meeting anyone I’d hang out with alone. They discouraged going to other kids’ houses and would insist on having get together at our house where they could keep an eye on us.
Going back a generation, my dad—who grew up in a village in Bangladesh—noted that other men in the village would notice him during his several mile long walk to school. If he did anything out of sorts word would have gotten back to his father.
I think there must be some middle ground between "no life" and underage girls bouncing around on the global Internet and getting venmo for pics by grown men.
Everything you list still exists and is not social media so I'm not really seeing all the parallels here. Also I never said where I draw the line because I don't know. But if I had a 13 year old daughter it would probably be something like you are not posting pictures of yourself online or the phone is gone for 30 days.
Sure, perhaps I was reading too much into your comment. As another comment suggests, there is a big spectrum between disallowing social media entirely and allowing your child unrestricted access. The example you give here makes complete sense. I would just hesitate to ban it entirely in the same way I would hesitate to ban the things I listed entirely.
Isn't the same more or less the case for every girl who works in cinema or TV or music? Or for that matter school cheerleaders, etc.? The veneer is thicker or thinner depending on the exact medium, but there's no getting away from the possibility that creepy men might be looking. I'm not certain the nuclear option here (ban participating in online spaces until majority) is the right one. I think some kind of tabulation of pros and cons is necessary.
(That beings said, it seems like after such a tabulation this case might be one of those that ends on the cutting floor.)
My cousin's daughter was a super popular teenage social media star. From what I can tell from the family's accounts, the parts of the audience that were creepy men didn't much bother the family, rather it contributed a large part of the narcissistic supply in total. There wasn't any shameful aspect of "whoring out" - the affect felt more empowering, like domination over that pitiful part of their audience. Either way I agree, if your social media presence makes you feel bad you should drop it and find something that adds meaning to your life.
She's an adult now and sounds like is living a healthy enough life given the trauma of having unlimited money and being young.
I understand keeping adult men out of a teenager's social media presence but the point where you lost me is the idea that adolescents seeking the attention of the opposite sex be that online or offline is comparable to "whoring herself out"?
Like what do you think teenagers do in the offline world? What were you looking at when you were 15 or 16?
Videogames are a great hobby, both online and off. As a child and teen I played Carmageddon, Duke 3D, Doom, and all manner of games that would've shocked my parents if they'd been paying closer attention. Younger friends were also playing Mortal Kombat and chatting on IRC.
Ultimately, as long as parents teach the kids to have healthy boundaries and critical thinking they'll be alright.
This teen selling her image directly to creeps strikes as borderline enablement of some mentally ill folks. Yet plenty of parents, mine included, would think nothing of having their kids model professionally.
This article is simply monetizing the issue using the same appeals that attracted the shooter in the first place. The article ends with how various lawyers have now set up corporations to promote the victim in exchange for a percentage. I assume one of them raised this to the attention of NYT to generate this promotional story. The message is, this is how you get famous: "I'm so pretty men are literally killing to be with me."
Not using victims name. They are a minor. Report the facts. "A young man was shot dead by a former police officer after the man blew a whole in his front door. The young man had stalked the daughter living at the house." Facts. You'd need far better writing than mine, of course.
The piece is not a report. This is a shock / emotion piece and is part of the US behavior of sexualizing young girls. It is promoting her. You may find it reasonable that a 15 year old girl has one million followers, at least one of whom purchased pictures from her for $300. Or you may not. I'm just saying that the article is part of that system, and that putting yourself out there is going to get this kind of attention and that it demonstrably works as a means to get famous.
Gaining fortune through fame is a sucker's game. Those with real fortunes attempt to avoid fame because it costs way more than it brings in. Once you hit that point of requiring private security, suddenly you're locked in and you need to keep the money coming in (via your fame) to protect yourself from the risk (associated with your fame). Plus it breeds the worst sort of social habits and incentives if you gain fame early in your life. It's so easy for young girls (who are even mildly attractive) with poor parents to get roped into this thing. It's the same perverse incentives that cause prostitutes to get their own daughters into the "family business" (which happens more often than you think). What you get validation from in your teenage years has a huge impact on what you strive for / put your effort into. Do the right thing for your kids long term and invest in them instead of cashing in on them.
There is great wisdom in this line. I would extend that to say that true freedom is the ability to 'do what you want, when you want.'
Money is one pillar of this. It grants you the ability to have the material resources to do what you want. But, 2 confounders get in the way. Time and physical/environmental constraints. If you are gaining money (1 pillar) by compromising the others. Your net freedom stays the same.
This includes all sort of suckers games:
* Anonymity allows you to get away with anything without anyone noticing. Your example, addresses that freedom tradeoff.
* Working long hours (in something unfulfilling) involves trading off time for money
* Back breaking involves trading health for money
A truly wealthy person is anonymous, rich and has all the time in the world, because they don't need to work to sustain their wealth.
My neighbor has twin daughters and casually told me he “found out” they have a YouTube channel.
Approaching 1k subscribers… and they’re early middle school aged.
He asked what I thought and I talked about how I monitor the best I can any online interactions for my kids and a secret YouTube channel would be a no go for me.
He seemed conflicted on what to do, I’m still kinda horrified.
I would feel conflicted as well. On the one hand, I would be happy to see someone work hard to build something they're interested in. On the other hand, I would feel nervous about all them getting exposed to the grossness of the internet.
My policy for any use of photos of our kids on my blog (which is mostly my projects, but occasionally includes triplogs, and as my kids are getting older, they show up a bit more often in builds) is simple: My wife and I both have to be entirely OK with any photos of them that I use - and I typically will use hand photos, or photos from the rear if they're helping with something. It's only very occasionally that you actually see faces, and that's going to be something like an interesting place we were as a family. Said photos are almost always a landscape shot with us in them.
Our house, our rules. When they're old enough to be interacting with the internet on their own, I intend to apply the same rules - and we run a limited tech household anyway. Electronics don't go in rooms, and we've deliberately set things up so that the house computer is visible when in use, etc.
"Oh, lulz, my daughter has a YouTube channel of her being a cute enough preteen to have 1000 subscribers without me knowing about it" would be well beyond the scope of reasonable, and in addition to having supervised-only internet use for quite a long while, I would supervise the removal of the channel. That's just not acceptable, in any way.
If my kids want to publish things to the internet (and I hope they will), that's fine - it just has to go through us as parents first, at least until a regular trend of good judgement is demonstrated, and we get access to whatever is being published as well.
As long as there has been fame, there has been stalkers. The idea that "it's on the internet, it must be safe" is a silly assumption. In fact, we should all know by now, the internet makes you more findable and more trackable.
Young Karens - and your parents - you should know better. Just ask Jodi Foster.
82 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] threadI think it bolsters the need for anonymity and privacy, especially online. In FL you have the sunshine act which makes doxxing particularly easy.
Better not fly.
I would say it's pretty uncommon.
If only social media hadn't enforced real name policies, it might be a little easier to stay anonymous while still being a content creator, maybe its different in other countries.
Edit: Facebook and Google+/Youtube had or have real name policies, before then it was the norm to never reveal your real identity online, I admit I am ignorant to TikTok policies, but apparently sharing your venmo address is not uncommon.
Some things are hard to learn the easy way. In any case, as I observed, the tradeoff seems worth it to the subject of the article and her family, even now they are made forcefully aware of the possible downsides. Perhaps it ultimately will not be but I personally don't feel like I'm in a position to dictate how they should balance the risks and rewards of stardom.
A man stalking and becoming obsessed with a specific woman, spending time and effort for sex and attention despite the woman clearly not being interested, is surprisingly common.
Many, many woman have real-life incidents of men literally stalking them, men repeatedly trying to get their attention / ask them out despite blatant “stop talking to me” rejection, and men getting really aggressive when they get rejected or “emasculated”. On games and social media it’s much worse, to the point where basically anyone who reveals themselves to be female gets creepy messages. You just don’t realize because relatively this stuff almost never happens to men, even attractive men.
Go on a sub like r/NiceGuys, r/TwoXChromosomes and you will see a ton of examples. But even random subs like r/AskReddit and my college’s sub have multiple stories because it’s so common. It’s actually a very serious issue in nearly every society, and this incident is an (albeit extreme) example of the persistence and aggressiveness most semi-attractive women experience.
> A man stalking and becoming obsessed with a specific woman [is common] . . .
I recognize the truth of what you're saying, but I also just want to point out that the discussion is about the former situation, not the latter one. Otherwise there wouldn't be these vague intimations that something is wrong with Tiktok in the NYTimes piece.
If your denominator is fans, yes.
If it is stars, not so much.
> You just don’t realize because relatively this stuff almost never happens to men, even attractive men.
Yes, it does, and not just conventionally attractive men. You don't realize because men have less social support for discussing it when it happens to them, and you mistake relative visibility for relative frequency.
I think this is similar to how domestic violence is cast as a women's issue, yet men are just as likely if not more so to be victims.
https://www.saveservices.org/2019/02/men-face-31-greater-ris...
If you're a parent out there, that should be the biggest red-flag possible. I'm not one to advocate for total control over your family's online interactions, but if a ball like that starts rolling, you need to have a serious sit-down conversation with your teen about boundaries and what kind of crazy, obsessed people there are in the world. Feeding their cycle of obsession should be a non-starter for any guardian out there, and I'm frankly surprised to learn that her father, a former police officer, didn't start asking questions after $300 hit her bank account.
People used to call the tech industry a "brave new world" of finance and commerce. Influencer culture is a whole different level of psychological horror, though.
1. It's just "buy me a coffee" but for TikTok, it's not weird until creepy adults make it weird. One creator I follow gets a bunch of people sending her $0.69 for the memes. Lots of people use Amazon wishlists for this too. People with artistic talent will sell merch on Etsy/Redbubble.
2. Oh honey, I will make no claims about anyone but myself but I did this kinda shit when I was that age. I realized I was hot, I was a sponge for attention, and too stupid to realize that having older guys hitting on me and buying me stuff wasn't as cool as I thought. Amazing in hindsight that nothing bad ever came of it.
It's important not to overgeneralize, we're talking only about the 99th percentile of men on the desperation scale, and the 99th percentile of women willing and able to profit from them. Despite what you read on the internet most people still have normal relationships! Constructing your worldview from the 1% most extreme forms of human interaction will, in so many words, make you crazy.
For example, "going dutch" is getting more popular, but generally men are still expected to buy drinks or pay for dinner. Women have to be more careful about date rape than men. And so on.
The average man’s and woman’s dating experience are disjoint. The problems the other faces are alien because they don’t come up. Women don’t have any problems if they want to have sex. Men who want to get married and have children do not go looking for long if they’re actually looking.
[1] https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2017/05/04/in-grip-strength-a... [2] https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/a-dallas-fc-under-15-b... [3] https://www.tennisnow.com/Blogs/NET-POSTS/November-2017-(1)/...
Based on the number of couples who divorce or need a counselor to communicate, it's seems this trend continues during or after many marriages too.
They were aware and allowed it. But, not knowing the family's financial circumstances, it raises a difficult question of where to draw the line with this kind of thing. The prospect of allowing your underage daughter to sell media featuring her to this kind of guy is sickening, but if $300 is a lot of money to your family, maybe it becomes easier to excuse? What do you do if he offers $10,000 for something else that's even more disturbing, and you're behind on your mortgage payments?
I'm disappointed the author of the piece didn't come right out and say that what TikTok is doing is profiting off of the sexualization of minors (of course the minors get a cut as well, so that apparently makes it okay?). It seems like the only moral path forward would unfortunately be to ban minors from participating, or keep them reaching the levels of fame that would result in them putting themselves (or their families) in a position to have to make the kind of choice I'm talking about above.
Yes, that.
I am grateful that my parents denied me access to video games and I will strictly deny my children access to content deem counterproductive. You're not making friends you're making a human being. The idea that a child needs social media or a controller to have a social life is a weak argument made by lazy parents. I feel sorry for this girl and shame on her parents and parents like them.
But if you did this you would also be denying your kid access to virtually their entire cultural universe. How would you feel if as a kid you weren't allow to see any of your friends outside of school? Watch any of the same movies, music, or play any of the same games as your peers? It would almost be another form of abuse in and of itself. Unfortunately your suggestion isn't really tenable, just ask any actual parents of teenagers if they could imagine taking this route.
Human beings don’t have fully developed brains until age 25. Controlling kids’ interactions with other humans with underdeveloped brains is like the most critical part of parenting.
Do you have kids? Can you explain what you mean by this?
Permissive parenting that treats kids like little adults and over-emphasizes cultivation of their individual relationships and preferences does them a disservice. It’s like letting a drunk person drive a car.
Could you please share? The ones I'm finding say that parents are the strongest influence [1] [2] [3] [4].
> Permissive parenting that treats kids like little adults and over-emphasizes cultivation of their individual relationships and preferences does them a disservice.
Parenting that attempts to "carefully control" interactions until their 25th birthday seems like a disservice of equal size. I met some of these kids when I got to University. They didn't fare very well without their parents to control everything. As with most things, the answer is likely in the middle.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4826572/
[2] https://blogs.iadb.org/desarrollo-infantil/en/parental-behav...
[3] https://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu13se/uu13se06.h...
[4] https://www.mckendree.edu/academics/scholars/issue17/green.h...
Do you control their interactions when they go to school? Or literally anywhere without you?
There are obviously limits to the degree to which parents can/should control their kids, but not allowing a kid to interact with strangers on the internet falls well within them. Knowing (and controlling) which of your child's peers they are communicating with is no different from keeping tabs on which home your child is visiting (and staying in touch with friends' parents wherever needed), or which of their friends they're hanging out with at the mall.
I was compelled to chime in on this thread because it resonates with me, personally. I'm an Indian raised by immigrant parents, and growing up one of the most stark observations I made was just how coddled my American friends could sometimes come across — they could more or less get whatever they wanted or do whatever they wanted. My parents established boundaries over the kinds of games I played, whom I hung out with, and the activities I partook in. Not being able to get what you want sometimes, or do what the "cool kids" are doing is just a part of growing up for lots of people. I wouldn't call it "abuse", and that kind of discipline definitely set me up for success in the real world. I continue to have a great relationship with my parents, and intend to raise my children with the same kind of discipline.
Going back a generation, my dad—who grew up in a village in Bangladesh—noted that other men in the village would notice him during his several mile long walk to school. If he did anything out of sorts word would have gotten back to his father.
(That beings said, it seems like after such a tabulation this case might be one of those that ends on the cutting floor.)
She's an adult now and sounds like is living a healthy enough life given the trauma of having unlimited money and being young.
Like what do you think teenagers do in the offline world? What were you looking at when you were 15 or 16?
Ultimately, as long as parents teach the kids to have healthy boundaries and critical thinking they'll be alright.
This teen selling her image directly to creeps strikes as borderline enablement of some mentally ill folks. Yet plenty of parents, mine included, would think nothing of having their kids model professionally.
The piece is not a report. This is a shock / emotion piece and is part of the US behavior of sexualizing young girls. It is promoting her. You may find it reasonable that a 15 year old girl has one million followers, at least one of whom purchased pictures from her for $300. Or you may not. I'm just saying that the article is part of that system, and that putting yourself out there is going to get this kind of attention and that it demonstrably works as a means to get famous.
There is great wisdom in this line. I would extend that to say that true freedom is the ability to 'do what you want, when you want.'
Money is one pillar of this. It grants you the ability to have the material resources to do what you want. But, 2 confounders get in the way. Time and physical/environmental constraints. If you are gaining money (1 pillar) by compromising the others. Your net freedom stays the same.
This includes all sort of suckers games:
* Anonymity allows you to get away with anything without anyone noticing. Your example, addresses that freedom tradeoff.
* Working long hours (in something unfulfilling) involves trading off time for money
* Back breaking involves trading health for money
A truly wealthy person is anonymous, rich and has all the time in the world, because they don't need to work to sustain their wealth.
You see a lot of channels mimicking each other and so on.
When the channel is “you” and you’re young I wonder what that means.
Approaching 1k subscribers… and they’re early middle school aged.
He asked what I thought and I talked about how I monitor the best I can any online interactions for my kids and a secret YouTube channel would be a no go for me.
He seemed conflicted on what to do, I’m still kinda horrified.
If it was about hobbies or something I might feel differently.
Our house, our rules. When they're old enough to be interacting with the internet on their own, I intend to apply the same rules - and we run a limited tech household anyway. Electronics don't go in rooms, and we've deliberately set things up so that the house computer is visible when in use, etc.
"Oh, lulz, my daughter has a YouTube channel of her being a cute enough preteen to have 1000 subscribers without me knowing about it" would be well beyond the scope of reasonable, and in addition to having supervised-only internet use for quite a long while, I would supervise the removal of the channel. That's just not acceptable, in any way.
If my kids want to publish things to the internet (and I hope they will), that's fine - it just has to go through us as parents first, at least until a regular trend of good judgement is demonstrated, and we get access to whatever is being published as well.
Young Karens - and your parents - you should know better. Just ask Jodi Foster.