Are you a parent? It certainly doesn't sound like it. While you might be able to keep a preteen away from things, once they are teenagers you can not prevent then from doing something they want to do. The amount of teenage pregnancies in states where they preach abstinence instead of doing sexual education is a pretty strong proof of that.

I think you're being too harsh on the parents. I don't know a single parent who allowed their kids to get cigarettes, but I also don't know a single teen who ever said "I'd like to smoke but my parents don't allow it so no, thanks". They just smoked behind their parents' backs.

I feel the comparison to cigarettes is apt: I know of children who had an "official" Facebook account for their parents and a "real" one for their school friends. And while I'm not sure I 100% agree with the lawsuit, I think it's worth asking: given how much money these companies invested in hooking teens up and how much they profited from it, should they also be held accountable for the negative effects of said hooking up?

And if the cigarette companies advertise to the kids? And the second hand smoke is everywhere (everyone else using them) and are almost ubiquitous now? Such that the only way around that is to cut those kids off from society?

I agree with you on parenting, but I won't, for a second, let these companies off the hook for the damage they cause.

Give them an inch, they'll take your entire soul if they can and it will help their quarterly P&L. Don't forget it.

The law has far more power over corporations than society has over parents and parents have over children. We are better off doing what is most effective: regulate the industry.

I think you over-estimate how much control parents do have, or even should have, over their own children.