The first paragraph is enough to raise my skepticism bells immediately. The mom—a marketing person—videoed her pre-teen daughter "dancing" and "modelling", put it on a public Instagram page, and oversaw the growth in viewership... but it was for "bonding with friends and family" she says. Right.
Not much to admire about the mom's rationalizations, but Meta has a large-scale problem with promoting child porn on Instagram. It goes way beyond this one example. Look at the WSJ articles linked from this one.
> While Meta bans children under the age of 13 from independently opening social-media accounts, the company allows what it calls adult-run minor accounts, managed by parents.
This is the problem. This woman just "sold" her daughter for money.
You know, someone had previously written that Meta should be held accountable. Which I guess I didn't consider too strongly.
I'm sorry, but Meta knows why "adult-run minor accounts" make them revenue. Fucking disgusting. I'd love to see some discovery on their internal metrics and how they build out that feature to drive up engagement from these horny creeps.
I think every parent should be aware that if they give their kids a phone the result is often that they become sexually involved with strangers at a young age. Occasionally, this results in actual meet ups, mostly just sexting.
I'm not sure if there is a "solution" to this problem, or its just the case that sexual morality as it has been conceived is already gone, and articles like these are just the death knells of a fallen order. The solution to changing sexual mores is always to socially isolate kids so they don't get "exposed." But you'd figure that, eventually, the kids will think we're all being a bit ridiculous.
Now that you say this, is there any actual data on harms caused to teenagers from consensual sexual relationships with adults? Or are we all just freaking out because it's unpalatable?
Kids can't consent because they're not aware of what's at stake and are easily manipulated by adults/people with authority. I know this is hn and the concentration of neckbeards is high but yes: fucking kids isn't ok
I'm sure you've heard this before, and I'm sure you don't give a slim shit, but like 3 minors a year undergo gender reassignment surgery. After countless consultations with physicians, therapists, parents, etc. And hormone blockers aren't given out trivially either. But I have no doubt that you know this.
So, really, pretty laughably not comparable. And to directly answer your question, the answer is duh, no.
I'm sure you're equally upset about young kids being put in beauty pageants or the countless (Republican) states that have recently defended child marriage. Right? Right?
Do you need data that says otherwise? Let's try something else. While I look for data, Can you list 5 ways a teenage girl could be harmed by this idea that she willingly agreed to sex with a 20 year old man? What 5 harms could come of that?
It's a no but you presented a false dichotomy. Either we have data or people are freaking out just because its unpalatable. Of course its a fallacy cause there are other ways to get to the truth without having enough children have sex with adults to have a sizeable, representative data.
Get help.
Also I'm sure we have plenty data that sex can be traumatic even for grown women in consensual relationship. Sex is very strong experience. And your penis is not some holy grail all people want.
> is there any actual data on harms caused to teenagers
Must all moral decisions be based on data? If so, what level of certainty is required of this data? In this hypothetically permissive world, is a 13 year the same as an 18 year-old? Because in my experience, their capacities to reason through difficult choices are entirely different. And what makes a 13 year-old substantively different from a 12 year-old? Clearly by limiting your hypothetical to teens, you’re saying something about their capacity to make fully reasoned choices in a way that differs from younger peers. Is there data there? Are these properties evenly distributed in the population? As a parent of a teen, I’m fine if there’s no data here; and I’m ok that it’s a moral choice that the culture in which I live makes based on a deeply held duty to protect, even if the harms aren’t fully understood. Because power differentials may create the illusion of consent, when it’s not truly fully given.
Teenagers don't suddenly become more mature on their birthdays, but the law needs to draw the line somewhere, and I want adults to be strongly discouraged from pursuing 13-year-olds.
> is there any actual data on harms caused to teenagers from consensual sexual relationships with adults?
YES
Becoming involved in sexual relationships early makes someone mean/cruel later in life. It also makes them more manipulative. Both are bad for society.
Bill and Hillary Clinton are examples of people who got involved sex too early, and we know how they treat people.
Imagine the nastiest attorney you know. I bet he/she was getting laid in junior high.
OTOH, helping children keep their innocence leads to kind and caring adults.
Open up any young female "influencer" video on YouTube. Look at the graph of which parts of the video are most played (hover over the playback bar and it pops up). Notice how the spikes in viewership line up with any nudity/bikini/suggestive angles.
Literally 90% or more of the viewers are just there to look at half-naked bodies. Exactly what the article is talking about.
I don't think anyone could pretend that "I just run a fashion channel" or "I just post videos from my kids gymnastics sessions" doesn't know who's really putting views on their videos. It should be blatantly clear to anyone, especially the creator who has more in-depth tools to monitor their audience. These people 100% know what they're doing and they're willing to keep going.
> The mom and daughter have been debating how to proceed. They offer some subscription content on another platform, but the majority of their followers were on Instagram.
This was the most eyebrow-raising out of an entire article of eyebrow-raising, questionable decisions made by that parent. WHICH other platform?
You're not an "influencer" if you're female and the audience is 92% men. You're just a porn star.
> At one point, she offered Instagram subscriptions to users willing to pay a monthly fee for extra photos and videos.
How more obvious can it be?
This article is clearly the result of trying to justify selling your daughter as a porn star. They'll take the money, but oh how they wish it didn't have to be like this (it doesn't, but I guess the alternatives involve actually working to do something useful).
'You're not an "influencer" if you're female and the audience is 92% men. You're just a porn star.'
That's unfair. There are young female chess influencers such as the Botez sisters and Anna Cramling, where I'd guess that the vast majority of the audience is male. Those women are not porn stars, even though their viewership is boosted by their youth and good looks.
I'm sure there are a few that would be popular anyway, but I'm highly sceptical.
There's basically a whole category of porn which is "not explicitly porn". I guess this scratches the male itch for "she doesn't do this for anyone else". YouTube etc is full of channels like this.
You just have to ask yourself, would I be watching, and would the viewership be anywhere near this large, if it was presented by a nerdy, spotty teenage boy? No? Then it's porn.
But have we weighed the social impact of teens not publishing themselves online to pervs? /s
This, like every other problem with pervasive brainrot technology, and hell good old fashioned ways to shut a brain off, will be talked about for years. Nothing will be done. Things in 10 years will feel normal and be unimaginable now. Thus is humanity for the 30 years I've been here so far.
Don't. Put. Your. Kids. On. The. Internet. I'd say "don't put unwitting strangers on the internet" too, but it's less targeted unless you're stalking a stranger, and I suspect too many HNers are Instagram users for that to be popular.
Also this is your too-often reminder that child beauty pageants are still popular in many places. Anyone taking attendance at those? Seriously, the status quo and what people are accustomed to biases people's norms in extreme ways and we just never seem to put that in context.
My point being, we have fucking pageants for children to get dolled up and pranced about for adults to watch, and here we are, off to the next horror-porn-horror travesty we all know is likely going to continue slowly getting more and more wack, as the norms shift.
I hate how 99% of the planet has no ability to consider long-term reprocussions of decisions, or worse, are incentivized to self-deluded about them. "Let's appeal to things that work in marketing and put our teenage daughter on the internet". Sounds like a god damn comedy sketch.
The parents rationalizing exposing their children to predators online seem almost as bad as the mealy-mouthed execs at Meta blaming their own software, as if they have no idea how to filter hashtags or block encrypted uploads.
I'd like to see Meta execs prosecuted and jailed for allowing this, and exposing the members of Congress taking money from Meta.
The counterpoint to this is that Americans are too sensitive about sex relative to other things, such as violence, with or without guns. Three year old little boys get to run around with toy weapons that shoot foam darts, and apparently that's perfectly fine. Meanwhile you're saying that a teenager apparently can't be trusted to make decisions about whom they show their own body to. That teenager might be old enough to have had sex already, and in times gone by might have been eligible for marriage. But if someone gets to see them -- with clothes on and at a safe distance -- let's call the Puritan Police and have them shamed publicly for their transgressions against good moral behaviour!
In the USA the Overton window for these two aspects of life have very little overlap with the rest of the world. In only a very small number of other places do you see fathers teaching their teenager daughters how to handle guns.
Its pretty simple. The parents almost surely would've been more cautious about their daughter getting married. But turning her into a marketing content mill on the internet was done with next to no consideration of the consequences.
And yeah, I guess if you don't care about tens of thousands of men perving on your daughter every day, upload away! Good thing men are never incredibly harassing or anything.
There's videos online of me doing stuff that would probably end my father's heartbeat in about 10 seconds. I'm not a prude. I'm someone that wishes people would think instead of playing this surprise Pikachu face constantly.
This general ignorance of long-term consequences, and this behavior of men... Neither are limited to Americans. I mean, I wish, it'd be an easy solution for me to avoid both, but alas.
> Sometimes the mom spent two to four hours a day blocking users or deleting inappropriate comments.
> At the same time, more sponsorships and deals were trickling in.
I can see the allure of a little extra cash and free stuff and attention, but this is just bad parenting.