Across this work, I’ve seen echoes of the same tactics once used by big tobacco (on health): manufacture doubt to delay regulation and market uncertainty as progress. Parents often feel a quiet unease watching their children absorbed by screens, yet worry that pushing back might leave them behind. That self-doubt is no accident. It mirrors the marketing logic that kept people smoking for decades – big tobacco sowed doubt and turned public concern into private guilt by funding skewed research insisting that there is “not enough evidence” of harm, shifting responsibility on to individuals and pouring vast sums into lobbying to delay regulation.
We must, therefore, fight back against BigEd or something.
“…shifting responsibility on to individuals…”
*gasp!* The absolute fiends! Fancy expecting individual responsibility to be a factor!
“Parents often feel a quiet unease watching their children absorbed by screens, yet worry that pushing back might leave them behind.”
No, they they just can’t be arsed to do anything about it, because that would require them to do something themselves, such as set an example, and personally engage with their children instead of coshing them with a screen. Far easier to let the kid mong out in front of a screen while Mum chats on FB and Mumsnet and has a cheeky game or 7 of online bingo.
Yeah JuliaM. Shocking, isn’t it. Colour me surprised that there are people not happy with individual responsibility.
Australia has the highest tobacco taxes in the world. End result – a thriving black market. Not even that black really, the place where I get my illegally imported cigarettes is just down the road, called The Smoking Club, and serves all comers, there’s no secret handshake required.
On screen time – my father bought an IBM PC not long after they came out when I was twelve, so it was swingely expensive. I spent many hundreds of hours in front of that, making it work, learning how to get French accents working in Wordstar so my essays were vaguely legible. And of course playing games. All that turned into a pretty good engineering career. So he saw it as a worthwhile investment.
On the other hand, Tik-tok I suppose…
“Pouring vast sums into lobbying”
If we had smaller govt that wouldn’t happen and o fag’s would be cheaper…
Let me explain to you how this works: you see, the corporations finance Team America, and then Team America goes out… and the corporations sit there in their… in their corporation buildings, and… and, and see, they’re all corporation-y…
…and they make money.
Society has always been horrified by children quitely reading by themselves. I remember at primary school once actually getting told off for reading.
My parents were both heavy cigarette smokers. They had no doubt that the habit was unhealthy. Hell, their generation referred to fags as “coffin nails” – a joke I enjoyed as a child.
I didn’t enjoy all the bloody cigarette smoke though – acrid filth.
Anyway, the point: the cigarette makers could have said what they liked, people knew. Hell, James VI & I knew.
Ltw,
“On the other hand, Tik-tok I suppose…”
Tik-Tok is just the latest scare thing. It’s short videos. Some entertaining, some a bit useful. Probably more useful than half of what kids are learning at school.
DM – remember the days when you’d get on a bus, and the windows were tinted yellow from nicotine? Good times.
I think the reason children have so many allergies now is they were never raised on a healthy diet of secondhand Lambert & Butler, leaded petrol fumes and Izal toilet paper.
I feel sorry for kids these days with their shitty vape pens. They’ll never know the innocent pleasure of buying loose cigarettes for 10p a time from the ice cream van. Tbf though I didn’t start smoking until I was old enough to drink (13).
And smoking is cool, or James Bond wouldn’t do it. Can you imagine Bond vaping?
Tiktok as surrogate parent. Better than nothing I suppose.
It didn’t take a genius to have worked out that the tobacco industry had a vested interest in trying to convince people that ciggies weren’t as harmful as was being claimed. Most smokers that I know started when they were too young and naive to know better and now would like to stop but can’t because they are addicted.
WB, you have a point. Back when I was screwing around with trying to get early(ish) computer stuff to work no one knew how useful the experience would be down the track, obviously not in the specific skills, although they used to be handy from time to time when dealing with old hardware, but in learning troubleshooting and understanding the underlying system. Maybe Tik-tok is the same and will instil useful skills that are yet to come up.
If you’re addicted to nicotine there are patches. If you’re addicted to the physical routine of smoking, there are vapes (until the government bans them).
Yeah Chris
Those patches taste bloody horrible !
Puts you right off smoking them.
Try snus! 🙂
@Chris Miller
“nicotine there are patches” – nicotine patches are very expensive. I wonder that they are the highest margin product in all of consumer-land.
The companies that sell patches are hardly better than the tobacco companies, they profit enormously from people’s addiction, though they didn’t get them addicted in the first place and the patches they purvey are not injurious like cigarettes, but they are not on the addict’s side, just profiteers.
There’s a business opportunity there for someone.