Unsupervised kids and teenagers online are easy prey

[Lisias]

Moved from another thread.

  

On 12/14/2024 at 4:24 AM, Scarecrow71 said:

I doubt that.  Highly.  People aren't going to simply forget what happened here simply because another studio produces a similar game.  Even a spiritual successor won't alleviate or make people forget what went down.

It works with politicians. People choose games using the same internal mechanisms they use to choose their leaders (as well anything else, to tell the truth) - most of them try to maximize the short term gains, disregarding long term consequences.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/02/human-decision-making/

[Snip]

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37.4% of parents let their children play video games online with anyone, 50.6% allowed their children to play online with their friends only, and 12% didn't let their children play online at all.

https://frontier.com/resources/e-is-for-everyone-video-game-study

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THE DANGERS OF UNMONITORED INTERNET ACCESS FOR CHILDREN

https://www.rosemead.k12.ca.us/cms/lib/CA01902711/Centricity/Domain/342/The Dangers of Unmonitored Internet Access for Children.pdf

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Avô fica com R$ 248 em conta após neta furtar R$ 179 mil para gastar no 'Jogo do Tigrinho', diz delegado

https://g1.globo.com/pr/norte-noroeste/noticia/2024/06/29/avo-fica-com-r-248-em-conta-apos-neta-furtar-r179-mil-para-gastar-no-jogo-do-tigrinho-diz-delegado.ghtml

 

Edited yesterday at 08:25 AM by James Kerman
Redacted by a moderator

[Scarecrow71]

[Snip]

So I'm just supposed to k ow and guess where you get your stats from?  I don't think so.  You say it, then it is on you to provide the data.

Edited yesterday at 08:26 AM by James Kerman
Redacted by a moderator

[Lisias]

4 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

So I'm just supposed to k ow and guess where you get your stats from?  I don't think so.  You say it, then it is on you to provide the data.

Nope. But a quick google with the keywords "Unsupervised kids and teenagers online are easy prey" would get you the results you want.

This is not a niche knowledge that needs some esoteric keywords to be found.

By acting the way you acted, you give us the impression that you are arguing in bad faith (by asking for "evidences" on every single detail as a way to sabotage the will to argue from the opponent and "win" the discussion by W/O) or that you just can't do minimal research to keep the argument healthy. Or are lazy, and wants other people to do the heavy lifting to you.

(and, yeah... A typo on the thread's tittle - fixing it).

[Scarecrow71]

3 hours ago, Lisias said:

By acting the way you acted, you give us the impression that you are arguing in bad faith

No, you assume I am.  In fact, let's go over the whole thing.  You stated:

A lot of the user base are kids and teenagers, playing games with little to no supervision of their parents. They are easy prey.

Using terms like "a lot" and "little to no" is a tactic used to obfuscate and convoluted the truth.  They need to be quantified so there is no ambiguity.  I was not attempting to be arguing in bad faith or accusing you of doing anything wrong.  YOU jumped to that conclusion.

Again - if you are going to make these claims, it is on you to provide the relevant sources.  It is not on me to take your ambiguous statement and go hunt this down myself.

[Lisias]

21 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

No, you assume I am.  In fact, let's go over the whole thing. 

Of course I did, once you acted like you did. I don't read minds, I rely on what you say (or write) to grasp what you mean.

If it walks like a duck, it flies like a duck, it swims like a duck and it quacks like a duck, so it's a duck to me.

 

21 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Again - if you are going to make these claims, it is on you to provide the relevant sources. 

Source? Do you have statistics to back this claim up? Can you pinpoint a source for this rule?

 

21 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

It is not on me to take your ambiguous statement and go hunt this down myself.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

It's not an ambiguous statement. I made myself clear, and I will quote myself:

11 hours ago, Lisias said:

A lot of the user base are kids and teenagers, playing games with little to no supervision of their parents. They are easy prey.

This is almost common sense. And the extreme easiness I found evidences about this subject absolutely demolish your argument about the subject being ambiguous. This is just a non sequitur... Quack!

That said, apparently we had established a pattern and I don't see a reason to keep arguing since from this point is clear that the arguments will focus on the argumentation itself, and not on the topic being argued.

Have a nice day.

[boriz]

11 hours ago, Lisias said:

A lot of the user base are kids and teenagers, playing games with little to no supervision of their parents. They are easy prey.

Yes. And they are a large source of revenue. Directing ads to children is immoral, exploitative, profitable, and qualifies as grooming. But it would seem perfectly legal.

I think it's wrong. You think it's wrong. We all think it's wrong. But how do we change it? Complain on social media? Good luck with that.

[Superfluous J]

8 hours ago, boriz said:

I think it's wrong. You think it's wrong. We all think it's wrong. But how do we change it? Complain on social media? Good luck with that.

It requires changing laws which requires electing people who will change the laws which requires discussing something that is not allowed on this forum.

[PDCWolf]

Loving the title, it gives all the wrong information and makes us all look spectacular

The problem with this statistic is context, as nowadays everyone who's ever touched a videogame has been considered a gamer since a couple years now after the term got absolutely commodified and gentrified. However, in a general way, this report is presented a bit insidiously ("the majority aren't minors" vs "minors are the second biggest group" as title) but does highlight the fact that minors make up 24% of gamers. However I think it's important to look at it the other way (and thus my problem with the title of that report): Minors are the second largest age group present in gaming. 

Now, I disagree with the fact that they're easy prey. Kids have to ask for permission or get an allowance to spend on games, or steal from their parents and deal with the consequences. Meanwhile, adults are the ones that tend to have "disposable income" and can be appealed to with the "please help the oh so poor devs" lots of games use to sell you microtransactions and such. On the other hand, we know (and that's why it's forbidden in most civilized places) that kids are very susceptible to gambling, even more than adults, which is why the industry went with lootboxes first, and now it's card packs, gachas, and so.

[Lisias]

14 hours ago, boriz said:

Yes. And they are a large source of revenue. Directing ads to children is immoral, exploitative, profitable, and qualifies as grooming. But it would seem perfectly legal.

I think it's wrong. You think it's wrong. We all think it's wrong. But how do we change it? Complain on social media? Good luck with that.

Not in the whole World. Advertising  for minors is banned on some countries, like mine. Not that it would be being effective, neither it's the right thing to do.

In the early 80's , minors were being heavily exploited in advertising in Brazil. Even hair drying were targeting kids, it was really... Weird.

Then they completely banned advertising products for kids. 100% forbidden.

What happened?

Essentially, since late 90's, there're no kids oriented TV shows anymore on this country - not to mention a whole industry that produced products for them essentially collapsing. There's almost no more local toy manufacturing, almost everything is imported from... Manufacturers that do ads for kids in International sites.

Overreacting is so bad as no reacting at all.

Now we don't have anyone interested on a healthy market around here, so we are essentially being commercially exploited by foreigners that are rising their kids on their country, and not on mine.

Problem: excessive exposure of advertising to minors are bad. Absence of a kids oriented local economy are equally bad. How to reach an equilibrium between these apparently conflicting needs?

 

5 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

It requires changing laws which requires electing people who will change the laws which requires discussing something that is not allowed on this forum.

From a Country in which we did that, doesn't works. We already have such laws. The problem is being the absolute negligence on enforcing them.

Selective enforcement of Laws and rules, unfortunately, is also a problem on USA.

I'm not expert, of course, but at least on my Country it would be enough to just enforce the Laws we already have. I fear

 

5 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

The problem with this statistic is context

"Give me enough numbers, and I can prove anything" - we use to say something like this on my mother tongue about statistics.

 

5 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Now, I disagree with the fact that they're easy prey. Kids have to ask for permission or get an allowance to spend on games.

My thesis is that unsupervised kids are. By definition, an unsupervised kid would ask his parent for money and would be granted without questioning, rendering such permission useless related to protecting the kid from hazards.

Not that yanking money from them would be the only (neither the worst) way of preying on them, but I would like to avoid exploring similar (but equally relevant) subjects that could risk not being Forum rules friendly.

 

5 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

or steal from their parents and deal with the consequences.

That's the problem... Our society can only cope to a finite number of simultaneous... transgressions. Our law enforcement is only good on dealing up to a relatively small number of transgressors in a society before the problem goes out of control.

Messed up countries like mine, obviously, collapses on a pretty smaller percentage of transgressors than USA's - no doubt. But, still, there's a cap in which law enforcement ceases to be effective.

When the transgressors are kids, it's a living hell because there's a whole new level of limitations about how we could punish them, making incredibly easy to make the illegal gains worth any pain caused by any consequence they are liable to.

Spoiler

People don't born criminals - they are grown into it.

 

5 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Meanwhile, adults are the ones that tend to have "disposable income" and can be appealed to with the "please help the oh so poor devs" lots of games use to sell you microtransactions and such.

Infantilized adults should be included on that 24%, IMHO.

 

5 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

On the other hand, we know (and that's why it's forbidden in most civilized places) that kids are very susceptible to gambling, even more than adults, which is why the industry went with lootboxes first, and now it's card packs, gachas, and so.

Yep. One possible development of the problem is to have the kids "trained" on gambling, so they grow up used to it and became an easy prey when adults. This is what 'grooming' is about, not?

Edited Saturday at 07:25 PM by Lisias
Fixing a quote mistake,

[James Kerman]

Some content has been removed, please discuss the subject without making things personal.

[Superfluous J]

On 12/14/2024 at 10:23 AM, Lisias said:

One possible development of the problem is to have the kids "trained" on gambling, so they grow up used to it and became an easy prey when adults. This is what 'grooming' is about, not?

I'm no expert but I thought teaching kids early that gambling is a huge waste of time - and then learn a healthy skepticism toward it - would make them less easy prey as adults.

And yes I believe it'd be considered grooming but hey if you want to groom kids to be skeptical I'm all for it.