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Comment by hamburglar | Hacker News Reader

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hamburglar

Breaking: Willy Wonka execs don’t let their kids eat unlimited amount of candy.

See how uninteresting and obvious that is?

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Only if your mental model equates youtube to junk food.

And yet, would that be wrong?

Youtube is a grocery store. So yes, if you view everything coming out of it as junk you're ignorant and wrong.

And yet, when going to a grocery store where everything is free, what content would adolescents be most likely to consume?

Your analogy was more apt than you could ever imagine.

I can't speak for your adolescents, but my kids make generally good decisions. I don't relate to the kids are stupid automatons with no agency or valid opinion mindset that is so prevalent with HN contributors. If your kids would only ever pick junk food, maybe that is a reflection on you more than them?

I myself was recently an adolescent, and still know many adolescents myself. My take is coming from my anecdotal experience, and the behaviour I've observed from my peers. Perhaps your kids don't show that side of them in front of you? I know my peers and I certainly didn't go out of our way to advertise such activities to our parents when we were younger.

That misses the point by a mile and a half: nobody let's their children eat unlimited amounts of chocolate. They do, however, let their children access Tiltok, Youtube, etc.

Except that's not true. Plenty of parents let their kids have unlimited access to junk food and candy. Neighbor kids come over and they don't know what to do because I only have water, fruit, and pretzels. I have been to so many parent's houses who have whole pantries of just sugary snacks.

No this misses the point.

I wanted to eat unlimited junk food when I was a kid but my parents wouldn't let me.

You can change it even to unlimited protein shakes. It is the same point. It is almost like kids are kind of stupid if you let them do whatever they want.

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