四歲小網紅 | Kidfluencers

We’ve looked at how pets can be enslaved for their masters to turn a profit, now let’s see how children are exploited by their parents to make them money.

There have been some interesting documentaries, movies and even reality TV series examining how some parents groom their children for ‘beauty pageants’, often transforming their children into disturbed and misguided people with very warped ideas of the world.

“Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” is one such example in which the audience gets a glimpse into the dark side of (totally legal) child exploitation. Nowadays, social media and the Internet Age have opened up a whole new world for parents with little care for privacy or the long-term negative psychological effects of making starlets, providing an even bigger stage for unscrupulous mothers and fathers to mould their children into walking, talking advertisements.

The article alludes to some weak laws and very minor limitations on how parents put their children to work, despite child-labour being banned in most countries already. Perhaps it’s worth asking how it is that society has come to accept such money-grubbing, materialistic behaviour as acceptable, and even made it hugely rewarding. What next? Tattooing advertisements on the foreheads of your elderly relatives?

參考資料:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/business/media/social-media-influencers-kids.html