Hacker News Reader

Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

Close to 0% of children do their own grocery shopping and buy their own boxes of cereal

And close to 0% of children have credit cards to buy these virtual lootboxes. These mechanisms prey on getting children to beg their parents to spend money.

They don't have to ask their parents first. The parents can link cards. One example, of many: https://www.techspot.com/news/98980-13-year-old-spent-64000-...

This just another way of saying their parents allowed it

It's completely different in practice. A child can't buy $50,000 of cereal in an afternoon.

In practice a parent can easily forego allowing their children to make unsupervised purchases linked to the parent's card! That seems absolutely crazy.

And 0% of children having credit card to buy lootbox (My country requires you to be over 18 to have one)

Their parents link the cards. Kids can buy things without consulting a parent each time.

Where I am from kids can get a debit card that can be used online at age 13.

You can have a debit card in the UK as a fairly young child. I think I got one at 12? I don’t know if there’s specific restrictions on buying in-game currency with them? I don’t know how they’d know though.

The first thing I did when I got a debit card was buy the 18 rated GTA Vice City!

Ever heard of PaySafe "cards"? Every single kid here uses that.

Who gave them the money for the cards?

Grandma for Christmas? Really, have you never been a child? They obviously didn’t get it for that specific purpose, that’s for sure.

Yes, and I never ran around with cash. Supposing I did get a cash gift before my teens, it would just sit in the "bank" i.e. a box in the dresser. Of course there were no gift cards or any of that crap back then, which is what you'd expect to receive today. I mean, as an adult now, what are you likely to receive: a gift card from a relative, or cash?

There's zero reason for a child to carry cash for no purpose. At any rate their lives are so structured usually that this notion that they're going to run to some store to convert it to prepaid cards is far-fetched to begin with.

I see a failure of parenting that some don't want to give credence. I'm not sure why.

So we should be locking kids out of the entire cash economy instead of just banning gambling microtransactions in games?

Btw. here they might need cash to take the bus home. And yes, people here let kids do that alone. Maybe because we live in a civilized society, who knows.

> So we should be locking kids out of the entire cash economy instead of just banning gambling microtransactions in games?

Yes, but not "instead". Regulate microtransactions, as we do any form of actual gambling.

> Btw. here they might need cash to take the bus home.

Bus pass.

A lot of gas stations and retail stores sell prepaid credit cards as well as gift cards that you can buy with cash.

Why should kids be walking around with large bills? Any parent worth their salt knows this could be exchanged for drugs and alcohol just as easily.

None of this makes sense. Some parents aren't doing their jobs.

Steam has giftcards you can buy at any store with your birthday cash.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com