
This Indiegogo campaign promotes child neglect. Here's my open letter to the CEO - loorinm
https://medium.com/@loorinm/so-today-i-saw-this-indiegogo-product-that-encourages-child-neglect-6a8605250d8c#.v92yvva0z
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im_down_w_otp
Why is it that we've gone about grossly abusing terms that imply harm to the
point that their real meaning is almost entirely lost?

The other day there was a big thing about how, "Twitter is Fucked" because the
platform only allows for "violent" speech. The trivial falsifiability of the
claim aside, it was a gross overstatement of the term "violent". The correct
term, based on the content of that article, would have been more like
"insipid", "vapid", or "derogatory".

Here we have the same thing with the term "neglect", the well-defined
construct "child neglect", and the concept of "promotes" with respect to
either of those things, and the application of all of them to content that is
mundane and innocuous at worst, and can only even border on a depiction of
"neglect", let alone the promotion of it, with the most perverse and
intentionally inflammatory interpretation of the video.

Are we so distanced from what real "harm", "neglect", and "violence" actually
look like that as denizens of tech-culture we must redefine them to instead
represent "minor annoyance", "occasionally tended to", and "somewhat
offensive"? It just seems like such an unnecessary expression of effete
privilege and insularity.

~~~
swasheck
I just made the connection that the OP of this link is the author. They seem
to post links to their own Medium posts so it's not surprising that this is
clickbait.

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swasheck
While I'm all about involved parenting, I think that this headline is
hyperbole. I read the documentation and watched the video and I didn't get the
impression that they were actually promoting child neglect. Furthermore, the
whole thesis of this post is based on an argument from silence that relies
upon the premise that parents are "habitually" absent. In fact, in many of the
scenes the parents are present and there to receive and applaud the child
after she'd done something on her own. Additionally, the author's definition
of neglect is quite aggressive and, as above, based on missing information
from the project and not on the information provided.

While I appreciate and understand the author's desire to protect children, the
post itself seems overly alarmist and based more on opinion than fact.

------
dalke
So, you're one of those anti-free range children/helicopter parents I read so
much about?

"A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter." \-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im4GwUD1UY8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im4GwUD1UY8)
. That's what the US was like when I was a kid. Were they all bad parents
then?

As
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7YrN8Q2PDU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7YrN8Q2PDU)
points out, "By Western standards, Japanese culture emphasises independence
and self-reliance from an extraordinarily young age." Do you think all of
Japan practices child neglect?

~~~
loorinm
Uh, no.

Sending a kid to a store has absolutely nothing to do with routinely relying
on an electronic device to manage all of their daily activities.

Kids COULD do a lot of things. They might be fine living alone in a box and
learning everything online, for example. But that doesn't make it a good idea.

I'm actually glad you bring up Japanese culture. Japan has several forms of
institutionalized child abuse, as well as a culture with extreme conformism
and too much social pressure for anyone to be vocal about dissent. So yeah,
probably a product of the way kids are raised. Also, with the extreme
xenophobia and non-acceptance of outsiders, it's probably safer on the streets
there than an average US city.

Providing your kid with day-to-day love and attention isn't really related to
whether they leave the house or not.

~~~
swasheck
You're still speaking in extremes and failing to see the middle ground. It's
another logical fallacy. You're saying that they're relying on an electronic
device to manage _all_ of the daily activities. You also take it to an extreme
by saying that they "might be find living alone in a box." I don't think that
anyone is proposing this, so now you're attacking a strawman.

Providing your kid with day-to-day love and attention isn't really related to
whether or not you give them a device to help them begin to manage their lives
and schedules in bite-sized pieces in a digital age doesn't constitute abuse.

