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?
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).
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.
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.