The Business of Childhood
August 22, 2011
JOEL BAKAN, a Canadian law professor, writes in The New York Times,
WHEN I sit with my two teenagers, and they are a million miles away, absorbed by the titillating roil of online social life, the addictive pull of video games and virtual worlds, as they stare endlessly at video clips and digital pictures of themselves and their friends, it feels like something is wrong.
He argues the problem is big business.
[T]he 20th century also witnessed another momentous shift, one that would ultimately threaten the welfare of children: the rise of the for-profit corporation. Lawyers, policy makers and business lobbied successfully for various rights and entitlements traditionally connected, legally, with personhood. New laws recognized corporations as legal — albeit artificial — “persons,” granting them many of the same legal rights and privileges as human beings. In an eerie parallel with the child-protective efforts, “the best interests of the corporation” was soon introduced as a legal precept.
Bakan is the author of Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children. It’s true that corporate rights to free expression have been broadened at the expense of children, leading to the exposure of the young to what was once considered pornography. But no corporation forces Bakan’s children to “stare endlessly at video clips and digital pictures of themselves.” How can anyone be an expert on “childhood under siege” when he doesn’t govern his own children? Modern technology is by its very nature inimical to childhood innocence. Any parent can battle big business by simply boycotting it.
