30 ms·

Debit card apps for kids are collecting a shocking amount of personal data

121 points by meowster 5y ago

itsdrewmiller 5y ago
Notably Step wouldn’t say whether they were selling data, whereas Greenlight said they weren’t and would remove the part of their privacy policy that reserves their right to do so in the future.
swiley 5y ago
If I had a kid they would not be allowed to use Apps or have a Google account. Sure I'd give them a laptop, I would even probably give them unsupervised access to the web after they seemed ready, but Apps are no good even for most adults.
- ta988 5y ago
  Sure, now lets try to apply that in practice with a kid angry at you for years.
  - weimerica 5y ago
    > Sure, now lets try to apply that in practice with a kid angry at you for years. That's called "being a parent" in my circle? I have a toddler that loves to throw the "you're not my friend!" at me when I cut off the TV and tell her it is time for dinner. I never had a cell-phone until 17, despite all my friends having had theirs as early as the middle school years. Never mattered much in my case. I didn't have an X-Box 360 with Halo 2 and online gaming despite many of my peers having had that. Not sure why this is being seen as a "must have."
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      These days a cell phone is often pretty much required to reasonably access some essential services.
      - ericd 5y ago
        For a kid? Such as?
        watwut 5y ago
        Friends.
        weimerica 5y ago
        Oddly, my children have no such issue.
        jenkstom 5y ago
        The whole point here is that parents should be able to guide their children into becoming social citizens in today's world - which means online. We're here to discuss parental agency and online privacy for children. We aren't here to discuss how great your parenting skills are. My ex has a narcissistic personality disorder and ... well. Any time somebody brags about how great a parent they are - especially when it's in the context of controlling children - I automatically think they aren't a great parent. That's probably just me and you probably are a really great parent, but I promise you I'm not the only one here thinking it.
        xeromal 5y ago
        That's tough to guess. Who knows if they're being left out of some events.
        ericd 5y ago
        Well, they said “services”, so I was curious what they meant there, since it sounded like something actually required, like to get signed up for school or something. I guess social media services might be what they were talking about, though.
    - scottLobster 5y ago
      This may shock you, but things have changed significantly in the past 20 years. Technology is even more necessary for social activity than when we were young. And I remember being the kid at the birthday parties that couldn't play video games, and couldn't participate in conversation at the lunch table because video games were most of what my friends talked about. Made me a permanent second-class citizen in my social group, which sucked. Got to the point where I literally did research on the games (reading strategy guides and such) just to have something to talk about. If the group plays poker, and you aren't allowed because of a moral stance on gambling, that's going to hurt your social opportunities quite substantially. Also don't make the classic mistake of assuming your kids have all the same variables you did, or can approach the same variables the same way. You have to adapt your experiences to their environment and their personality/needs, often with different outcomes than what you experienced. Most parents are too cowardly for that and mess up their kids with strict enforcement of obsolete rules or letting them run wild with too little structure/guidance.
      - weimerica 5y ago
        > Technology is even more necessary for social activity than when we were young. Oddly, my own children do not have that same issue. In a world of billions, there are no universal claims like this.
        OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
        Parent here, have you asked them if not having a phone has been a problem? Or are you just assuming it isn't because it hasn't been a problem with them for you.
        Cipater 5y ago
        How can you be so sure that they're not being affected socially? Because they don't tell you about it?
        leetcrew 5y ago
        just curious, how old are you children? you mentioned having a toddler further up. it makes sense that most social activities are planned by the parents anyway at that age. I remember things starting to change in middle school. kids started making same-day plans for after school and shooting their parents a quick text to say where they were going. I tried using the school's phone a few times when I was invited, but there wasn't always time to visit the office between classes. that was pretty clunky to do one or more times per week, and I knew I would be in big trouble if I wasn't there when my dad came to pick me up. so I just had to accept that I wouldn't be participating in most of those spontaneous hangouts until I got a phone. like you said, everyone is different. some kids are charismatic enough that everyone else will work around whatever inconveniences they bring. others are not. I knew my parents had a very firm stance on stuff like phones, so I didn't bother complaining about it much.
    - skeeter2020 5y ago
      In my 13-yr-olds class only 2 people don't have iPhones. Don't under-estimate the social impact of being excluded from that otherwise class-wide group chat. If you're in the toddler stage you control almost every variable. The game changes once they hit > 8.
      - swiley 5y ago
        You may not be aware but an iPhone isn't required to participate in group chats: MMS and XMPP still exist, there are even bridges between them.
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  You're kid will be very upset when they are slowly excluded from all of their friend groups when noone wants to email or text just one member of the group. Sad reality of it.
  - meowster 5y ago
    Hopefully my kid(s) will be the one to convince their friends to use better communication apps. Perhaps when the kids are younger before they get phones, I can convince their friends' parents to use the better platforms.
    - throwanem 5y ago
      Speaking as someone who lost an entire social circle because of conscientiously objecting to Facebook: yeah, good luck with that.
      - ValentineC 5y ago
        > conscientiously objecting to Facebook Does that mean not having a WhatsApp account as well?
        throwanem 5y ago
        Yes. Or Instagram, or any other Facebook-owned property as far as I know, and I do check. It's also why, last time I heard from a Facebook recruiter, I told him to make sure the next one to cold-call me had their general counsel's contact info handy so I'd know where to have my own attorney send the cease-and-desist. Seems to have had the intended effect, so far at least.
        throwaway4220 5y ago
        Second this. Signal had some momentum with some of my contacts, but unfortunately i think they're all back on whatsapp.
        5y ago
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > they would not be allowed to use Apps or have a Google account On one level, I agree with this. On another, I remember the restrictions my parents were convinced they had on me to which trivial workarounds existed.
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    I learned about MAC filtering and how to get around it with MAC spoofing at an early age this way!
- TuringNYC 5y ago
  >> If I had a kid they would not be allowed to use Apps or have a Google account. In our school district (Arlington Public Schools in Virginia), children get assigned Google GSuite accounts by default starting in Kindergarten. They are used for a variety of things, including authentication to multiple school apps.
  - jasonladuke0311 5y ago
    Yeah, and our last school district pushed GPOs to my son's personal Chromebook. Really pissed me off. I was trying to help him troubleshoot an issue and dev tools were disabled and greyed out in the chrome settings. When we switched back to his personal account they were back.
    - skeeter2020 5y ago
      annoying, but one of the benefits of chromebooks is the account isolation. I prefer this to the idea of my domain-controlled policies being blended with those of the school district.
    - Peanuts99 5y ago
      I don't agree that kids should have dev tools disabled because that just seems counter productive but the school manages the accounts and has a responsibility over student safeguarding. I'd be concerned if they weren't enforcing policies on students accounts.
- jenkstom 5y ago
  "If I had a kid". There you go. Get back with us when you have to actually do the job you are criticizing.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    I have three kids, but find it more funny than maddening when I hear this. We've all been there: as teenagers, young technologists, pre-parents. Plans are simple; reality is messy. Parenting is about picking and choosing your battles, trying to get the fundamentals right and conceding the minor losses. You do your best and adapt along the way; any master plan will inevitably get the details wrong.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  I understand where you are coming from, but you'd be surprised how quickly your abstract principles collide with reality. All of my kids use Google apps in school; what would yours do?
rotebeete 5y ago
TLDR: Tools to invade the privacy of children invade the privacy of children.
hairofadog 5y ago
shocking "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
basisword 5y ago
What does a kid need a special debit card for? When they’re old enough to get a job they can just get a regular bank account.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  How many kids do you know with a job? Now that a lot of society is cashless, children need a way to spend their pocket money even.
  - basisword 5y ago
    I was considering teenagers “kids”. Surely parents can just use their own debit card when the kid needs something that can’t be bought with cash? Special debit cards for kids seem to add unnecessary complexity (and opportunity for abuse) to the solution for a really simple problem.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      > Surely parents can just use their own debit card when the kid needs something that can’t be bought with cash? What if the child's gone to the store on their own?
      - basisword 5y ago
        Stores accept cash.
        chrisseaton 5y ago
        Where I live, many do not anymore. That's a trend that's only going to spread and accelerate. Hence the product.
        basisword 5y ago
        Really? Mind if I ask where? As much as cash use has dwindled here in the UK (at least anecdotally) I’ve never come across a store that won’t accept cash. I know a couple that didn’t accept it early in the pandemic (due to fear of covid spreading on cash) but that didn’t last long.
beshrkayali 5y ago
It's more shocking to me that parents are giving their kids cards and making them use apps for allowance.
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  Is it that shocking? I can count the number of times I used cash in the last 2 years on one hand thanks to covid. Everywhere that was a hold-out was forced adopt the "tap" cards. By the time I have kids and they grow up enough to start having an allowance will be 10 years from now and I don't think we'll be using cash more than now. The people making these apps obviously see that trend too.
- jenkstom 5y ago
  I'm guessing you aren't a parent. How else can they buy those Fortnite skins? Robux? Minecoins?
  - markzzerella 5y ago
    If my kid isn't as offended by that stuff as I was when Bethesda rolled out horse armor as paid dlc then I raised them wrong.
    - maximus-decimus 5y ago
      Lol, the art of milking people has been perfected since then. You kid also won't have the same expectations as you of not paying for dlcs since that's just not the world they're gonna have grown in. Hell, even car companies are trying their best to turn cars into a subscription service.
- closeparen 5y ago
  We kept a ledger on the fridge where we credited my allowance and debited my purchases on my mom’s credit card. I didn’t have a smartphone but I could text. Around 14 I wrote a little Rails app that would receive transactions via SMS from Twilio. We never ended up using it but it was fun to write. Shortly after that I got a joint checking account with a debit card in my name. Not surprised at all.
pavlov 5y ago
This seems like a curious data set because it’s likely to be often very misleading about the adult person’s interests. I spent all my money on computer games at age 12. At 19 I thought they were pointless and never bought one for the next fifteen years. The teenage data set would have been worse than noise for someone trying to sell me stuff.
- peteradio 5y ago
  Forget about them targeting you specifically. They can use you then to lure someone with similar traits now.
nipponese 5y ago
Many posts here questioning why a kid needs/wants a debt card. I think most would be less surprised to know many things kids want to buy are digital, specifically app subs and virtual currency (i.e., robux). Even a 4-year old will be asking for an AppStore gift card to sub to Sago Mini
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
  > why a kid needs/wants Needs and wants are extremely different things. Let's not merge them together.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Psychological needs are needs.
ipaddr 5y ago
Having a saving account teaches kids a lot. Having a debt card teaches them to spend.
- frankbreetz 5y ago
  responsible spending is an important part of budgeting
- not_jd_salinger 5y ago
  > Having a saving account teaches kids a lot. Growing up I always had this belief that wealth was about building a big savings account, and that rich people where like Scrooge McDuck swimming in big pools of money. This is, imho, a fantastic piece of propaganda. It's incredible how often people will say things like "Jeff Bezos is only rich because he owns so much stock!" As soon as you get your first big RSU payout you realize it is insane to keep the majority, or even a sizable portion of your capital in cash. Even Marx saw that Capital, by its definition, is in motion. The lesson of a savings account is that you should hand your money over to banks so that they can use it. But most kids aren't taught what it really means to park your capital in a bank. I remember how many times I was given the "miracle of compound interest talk" but nobody get fantastically rich from the growing interest on their savings account. Today that's even more ridiculous, interest rates are way, way down and inflation is starting to rise. Keeping more than enough money to serve as an emergency fund is the same as just burning some of it for fun. We are in an insane debt bubble, but that doesn't change the reality of how life works in an insane debt bubble. Using credit to buy things today, when interest rates are low and inflation is rising is far more rational than putting money in a savings account. A better lesson would be to use that cash to buy things that are useful and can help build skills, which can't be taken by a debt collector. A guitar is a better purchase than a bunch of digital music, a laptop to program on is a better purchase than an ipad, etc.
  - rytor718 5y ago
    I see your point. But I think this is why I don't think either giving a kid a savings account nor a debit card alone teaches them anything. That said, I think a savings account offers much more valuable lessons to be learned, or at least it did for me growing up. I saved money all the time as a kid because I was taught that saving is good. One of the first accounts I got was a savings account. However, I soon learned that I needed to access that money so I got a checking account and started to divide my deposits between each. And on and on, you get the point. To this day I keep a cash savings -- I need it. Yes its not earning as much as my other investments, but I don't need it to. I need liquidity and I value being able to pull large chunks of my hard earned money from the bank to do a miriad of things: spontaneous vacation, buy a car, medical emergencies, etc. I think both devices offer something to youth. However, it seems like giving kids debit cards leans in the wrong directions as far as valuable life lessons. I don't want my kids learning to spend their money. Kids are already great a spending my money. They need to understand how money actually works (beyond spending).
jonheller 5y ago
My son has a Greenlight card. It's been fantastic for helping him understand allowance, savings, charity in a more modern age than when I used to get cash I put in an envelope with a table on the front. It's taught him about interest and he's able to see quick results (especially when I started his savings account at something crazy like a 500% interest rate to encourage him). As others have mentioned, cash is near useless for children nowadays. He used to give me cash when he bought Robux etc but cash is also near useless for me. I was concerned when I saw this headline but it's not quite clear to me what impact this would have on him, that wouldn't be gathered once he got a credit or debit card as an adult. Maybe because he literally purchases from only three places (Apple Store, Microsoft, Roblox) and donates to a panda charity.
- Shikadi 5y ago
  500% interest rate O.o that might just set unrealistic expectations when for so long interest rates have been at _best_ 2% on a savings account
  - nix23 5y ago
    On his saving account, i think that's a pretty good motivation to save money then to use a debit card...i thinks it's a great idea.
    - rightbyte 5y ago
      I think I will borrow your idea. That is about 3% per week.
      - nix23 5y ago
        I personally would go even higher, for a child a week is a really long time...maybe like a month for us old ones ;)
- swiley 5y ago
  >but cash is also near useless for me. Did your bank/ATM stop accepting it? Do you never settle debts with your friends?
jenkstom 5y ago
I gave my daughter a debit card when she was 13 and put some weekly amount on it for the next 10 years. She's now an adult who has the ability to make sound financial decisions even though her mother has a spending addiction and a personality disorder. I strongly disagree that it is a bad idea. The bad idea is those companies then sharing information about children that should be private and parents should have a say in. Blaming parents when companies have outrageous privacy policies regarding child accounts is ridiculous. We have to teach our children to survive in this world. My 9 year old triplets all have greenlight cards. This article is very disturbing. But they are learning fiscal agency, which is something my generation wasn't taught at all. When I finally got a job (at 15) it was way too late for me. I spent it all on coin-op video games. That might be reasonable at 9, but not at 15.
candiodari 5y ago
Look, the EU now has decided to track ALL private communications by everyone talking to any European. "Because children"! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27753727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27753727 How does this compare to that? Note that this is after they've chosen that using medical information is fair game for debt recovery, so it's a matter of time before this information, too, is used for that. Sadly our societies have chosen that surveillance is the future, and a lot will be needed to fight it at this point. Is the fight to focus on really that some banks might use this info to market loans? I mean, sure, it can damage people, but ... not nearly as much as government surveillance will.
chrisgd 5y ago
A lot of old people yelling at clouds in this thread. Needs, wants, in my day, get the belt, etc. I want my child to be safe online and I want them to be able to communicate with their friends through the medium most children are using. These two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive and I can still be a good parent.

121 points by meowster 5y ago

Notably Step wouldn’t say whether they were selling data, whereas Greenlight said they weren’t and would remove the part of their privacy policy that reserves their right to do so in the future.

swiley 5y ago

If I had a kid they would not be allowed to use Apps or have a Google account. Sure I'd give them a laptop, I would even probably give them unsupervised access to the web after they seemed ready, but Apps are no good even for most adults.

ta988 5y ago
Sure, now lets try to apply that in practice with a kid angry at you for years.
- weimerica 5y ago
  > Sure, now lets try to apply that in practice with a kid angry at you for years. That's called "being a parent" in my circle? I have a toddler that loves to throw the "you're not my friend!" at me when I cut off the TV and tell her it is time for dinner. I never had a cell-phone until 17, despite all my friends having had theirs as early as the middle school years. Never mattered much in my case. I didn't have an X-Box 360 with Halo 2 and online gaming despite many of my peers having had that. Not sure why this is being seen as a "must have."
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    These days a cell phone is often pretty much required to reasonably access some essential services.
    - ericd 5y ago
      For a kid? Such as?
      - watwut 5y ago
        Friends.
        weimerica 5y ago
        Oddly, my children have no such issue.
        jenkstom 5y ago
        The whole point here is that parents should be able to guide their children into becoming social citizens in today's world - which means online. We're here to discuss parental agency and online privacy for children. We aren't here to discuss how great your parenting skills are. My ex has a narcissistic personality disorder and ... well. Any time somebody brags about how great a parent they are - especially when it's in the context of controlling children - I automatically think they aren't a great parent. That's probably just me and you probably are a really great parent, but I promise you I'm not the only one here thinking it.
        xeromal 5y ago
        That's tough to guess. Who knows if they're being left out of some events.
        ericd 5y ago
        Well, they said “services”, so I was curious what they meant there, since it sounded like something actually required, like to get signed up for school or something. I guess social media services might be what they were talking about, though.
  - scottLobster 5y ago
    This may shock you, but things have changed significantly in the past 20 years. Technology is even more necessary for social activity than when we were young. And I remember being the kid at the birthday parties that couldn't play video games, and couldn't participate in conversation at the lunch table because video games were most of what my friends talked about. Made me a permanent second-class citizen in my social group, which sucked. Got to the point where I literally did research on the games (reading strategy guides and such) just to have something to talk about. If the group plays poker, and you aren't allowed because of a moral stance on gambling, that's going to hurt your social opportunities quite substantially. Also don't make the classic mistake of assuming your kids have all the same variables you did, or can approach the same variables the same way. You have to adapt your experiences to their environment and their personality/needs, often with different outcomes than what you experienced. Most parents are too cowardly for that and mess up their kids with strict enforcement of obsolete rules or letting them run wild with too little structure/guidance.
    - weimerica 5y ago
      > Technology is even more necessary for social activity than when we were young. Oddly, my own children do not have that same issue. In a world of billions, there are no universal claims like this.
      - OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
        Parent here, have you asked them if not having a phone has been a problem? Or are you just assuming it isn't because it hasn't been a problem with them for you.
      - Cipater 5y ago
        How can you be so sure that they're not being affected socially? Because they don't tell you about it?
      - leetcrew 5y ago
        just curious, how old are you children? you mentioned having a toddler further up. it makes sense that most social activities are planned by the parents anyway at that age. I remember things starting to change in middle school. kids started making same-day plans for after school and shooting their parents a quick text to say where they were going. I tried using the school's phone a few times when I was invited, but there wasn't always time to visit the office between classes. that was pretty clunky to do one or more times per week, and I knew I would be in big trouble if I wasn't there when my dad came to pick me up. so I just had to accept that I wouldn't be participating in most of those spontaneous hangouts until I got a phone. like you said, everyone is different. some kids are charismatic enough that everyone else will work around whatever inconveniences they bring. others are not. I knew my parents had a very firm stance on stuff like phones, so I didn't bother complaining about it much.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    In my 13-yr-olds class only 2 people don't have iPhones. Don't under-estimate the social impact of being excluded from that otherwise class-wide group chat. If you're in the toddler stage you control almost every variable. The game changes once they hit > 8.
    - swiley 5y ago
      You may not be aware but an iPhone isn't required to participate in group chats: MMS and XMPP still exist, there are even bridges between them.
thatguy0900 5y ago
You're kid will be very upset when they are slowly excluded from all of their friend groups when noone wants to email or text just one member of the group. Sad reality of it.
- meowster 5y ago
  Hopefully my kid(s) will be the one to convince their friends to use better communication apps. Perhaps when the kids are younger before they get phones, I can convince their friends' parents to use the better platforms.
  - throwanem 5y ago
    Speaking as someone who lost an entire social circle because of conscientiously objecting to Facebook: yeah, good luck with that.
    - ValentineC 5y ago
      > conscientiously objecting to Facebook Does that mean not having a WhatsApp account as well?
      - throwanem 5y ago
        Yes. Or Instagram, or any other Facebook-owned property as far as I know, and I do check. It's also why, last time I heard from a Facebook recruiter, I told him to make sure the next one to cold-call me had their general counsel's contact info handy so I'd know where to have my own attorney send the cease-and-desist. Seems to have had the intended effect, so far at least.
      - throwaway4220 5y ago
        Second this. Signal had some momentum with some of my contacts, but unfortunately i think they're all back on whatsapp.
        5y ago
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> they would not be allowed to use Apps or have a Google account On one level, I agree with this. On another, I remember the restrictions my parents were convinced they had on me to which trivial workarounds existed.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  I learned about MAC filtering and how to get around it with MAC spoofing at an early age this way!
TuringNYC 5y ago
>> If I had a kid they would not be allowed to use Apps or have a Google account. In our school district (Arlington Public Schools in Virginia), children get assigned Google GSuite accounts by default starting in Kindergarten. They are used for a variety of things, including authentication to multiple school apps.
- jasonladuke0311 5y ago
  Yeah, and our last school district pushed GPOs to my son's personal Chromebook. Really pissed me off. I was trying to help him troubleshoot an issue and dev tools were disabled and greyed out in the chrome settings. When we switched back to his personal account they were back.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    annoying, but one of the benefits of chromebooks is the account isolation. I prefer this to the idea of my domain-controlled policies being blended with those of the school district.
  - Peanuts99 5y ago
    I don't agree that kids should have dev tools disabled because that just seems counter productive but the school manages the accounts and has a responsibility over student safeguarding. I'd be concerned if they weren't enforcing policies on students accounts.
jenkstom 5y ago
"If I had a kid". There you go. Get back with us when you have to actually do the job you are criticizing.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  I have three kids, but find it more funny than maddening when I hear this. We've all been there: as teenagers, young technologists, pre-parents. Plans are simple; reality is messy. Parenting is about picking and choosing your battles, trying to get the fundamentals right and conceding the minor losses. You do your best and adapt along the way; any master plan will inevitably get the details wrong.
skeeter2020 5y ago
I understand where you are coming from, but you'd be surprised how quickly your abstract principles collide with reality. All of my kids use Google apps in school; what would yours do?

rotebeete 5y ago

TLDR: Tools to invade the privacy of children invade the privacy of children.

hairofadog 5y ago

shocking "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

basisword 5y ago

What does a kid need a special debit card for? When they’re old enough to get a job they can just get a regular bank account.

chrisseaton 5y ago
How many kids do you know with a job? Now that a lot of society is cashless, children need a way to spend their pocket money even.
- basisword 5y ago
  I was considering teenagers “kids”. Surely parents can just use their own debit card when the kid needs something that can’t be bought with cash? Special debit cards for kids seem to add unnecessary complexity (and opportunity for abuse) to the solution for a really simple problem.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > Surely parents can just use their own debit card when the kid needs something that can’t be bought with cash? What if the child's gone to the store on their own?
    - basisword 5y ago
      Stores accept cash.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        Where I live, many do not anymore. That's a trend that's only going to spread and accelerate. Hence the product.
        basisword 5y ago
        Really? Mind if I ask where? As much as cash use has dwindled here in the UK (at least anecdotally) I’ve never come across a store that won’t accept cash. I know a couple that didn’t accept it early in the pandemic (due to fear of covid spreading on cash) but that didn’t last long.

beshrkayali 5y ago

It's more shocking to me that parents are giving their kids cards and making them use apps for allowance.

monkeybutton 5y ago
Is it that shocking? I can count the number of times I used cash in the last 2 years on one hand thanks to covid. Everywhere that was a hold-out was forced adopt the "tap" cards. By the time I have kids and they grow up enough to start having an allowance will be 10 years from now and I don't think we'll be using cash more than now. The people making these apps obviously see that trend too.
jenkstom 5y ago
I'm guessing you aren't a parent. How else can they buy those Fortnite skins? Robux? Minecoins?
- markzzerella 5y ago
  If my kid isn't as offended by that stuff as I was when Bethesda rolled out horse armor as paid dlc then I raised them wrong.
  - maximus-decimus 5y ago
    Lol, the art of milking people has been perfected since then. You kid also won't have the same expectations as you of not paying for dlcs since that's just not the world they're gonna have grown in. Hell, even car companies are trying their best to turn cars into a subscription service.
closeparen 5y ago
We kept a ledger on the fridge where we credited my allowance and debited my purchases on my mom’s credit card. I didn’t have a smartphone but I could text. Around 14 I wrote a little Rails app that would receive transactions via SMS from Twilio. We never ended up using it but it was fun to write. Shortly after that I got a joint checking account with a debit card in my name. Not surprised at all.

pavlov 5y ago

This seems like a curious data set because it’s likely to be often very misleading about the adult person’s interests. I spent all my money on computer games at age 12. At 19 I thought they were pointless and never bought one for the next fifteen years. The teenage data set would have been worse than noise for someone trying to sell me stuff.

peteradio 5y ago
Forget about them targeting you specifically. They can use you then to lure someone with similar traits now.

nipponese 5y ago

Many posts here questioning why a kid needs/wants a debt card. I think most would be less surprised to know many things kids want to buy are digital, specifically app subs and virtual currency (i.e., robux). Even a 4-year old will be asking for an AppStore gift card to sub to Sago Mini

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
> why a kid needs/wants Needs and wants are extremely different things. Let's not merge them together.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Psychological needs are needs.

ipaddr 5y ago

Having a saving account teaches kids a lot. Having a debt card teaches them to spend.

frankbreetz 5y ago
responsible spending is an important part of budgeting
not_jd_salinger 5y ago
> Having a saving account teaches kids a lot. Growing up I always had this belief that wealth was about building a big savings account, and that rich people where like Scrooge McDuck swimming in big pools of money. This is, imho, a fantastic piece of propaganda. It's incredible how often people will say things like "Jeff Bezos is only rich because he owns so much stock!" As soon as you get your first big RSU payout you realize it is insane to keep the majority, or even a sizable portion of your capital in cash. Even Marx saw that Capital, by its definition, is in motion. The lesson of a savings account is that you should hand your money over to banks so that they can use it. But most kids aren't taught what it really means to park your capital in a bank. I remember how many times I was given the "miracle of compound interest talk" but nobody get fantastically rich from the growing interest on their savings account. Today that's even more ridiculous, interest rates are way, way down and inflation is starting to rise. Keeping more than enough money to serve as an emergency fund is the same as just burning some of it for fun. We are in an insane debt bubble, but that doesn't change the reality of how life works in an insane debt bubble. Using credit to buy things today, when interest rates are low and inflation is rising is far more rational than putting money in a savings account. A better lesson would be to use that cash to buy things that are useful and can help build skills, which can't be taken by a debt collector. A guitar is a better purchase than a bunch of digital music, a laptop to program on is a better purchase than an ipad, etc.
- rytor718 5y ago
  I see your point. But I think this is why I don't think either giving a kid a savings account nor a debit card alone teaches them anything. That said, I think a savings account offers much more valuable lessons to be learned, or at least it did for me growing up. I saved money all the time as a kid because I was taught that saving is good. One of the first accounts I got was a savings account. However, I soon learned that I needed to access that money so I got a checking account and started to divide my deposits between each. And on and on, you get the point. To this day I keep a cash savings -- I need it. Yes its not earning as much as my other investments, but I don't need it to. I need liquidity and I value being able to pull large chunks of my hard earned money from the bank to do a miriad of things: spontaneous vacation, buy a car, medical emergencies, etc. I think both devices offer something to youth. However, it seems like giving kids debit cards leans in the wrong directions as far as valuable life lessons. I don't want my kids learning to spend their money. Kids are already great a spending my money. They need to understand how money actually works (beyond spending).

jonheller 5y ago

My son has a Greenlight card. It's been fantastic for helping him understand allowance, savings, charity in a more modern age than when I used to get cash I put in an envelope with a table on the front. It's taught him about interest and he's able to see quick results (especially when I started his savings account at something crazy like a 500% interest rate to encourage him). As others have mentioned, cash is near useless for children nowadays. He used to give me cash when he bought Robux etc but cash is also near useless for me. I was concerned when I saw this headline but it's not quite clear to me what impact this would have on him, that wouldn't be gathered once he got a credit or debit card as an adult. Maybe because he literally purchases from only three places (Apple Store, Microsoft, Roblox) and donates to a panda charity.

Shikadi 5y ago
500% interest rate O.o that might just set unrealistic expectations when for so long interest rates have been at _best_ 2% on a savings account
- nix23 5y ago
  On his saving account, i think that's a pretty good motivation to save money then to use a debit card...i thinks it's a great idea.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    I think I will borrow your idea. That is about 3% per week.
    - nix23 5y ago
      I personally would go even higher, for a child a week is a really long time...maybe like a month for us old ones ;)
swiley 5y ago
>but cash is also near useless for me. Did your bank/ATM stop accepting it? Do you never settle debts with your friends?

jenkstom 5y ago

I gave my daughter a debit card when she was 13 and put some weekly amount on it for the next 10 years. She's now an adult who has the ability to make sound financial decisions even though her mother has a spending addiction and a personality disorder. I strongly disagree that it is a bad idea. The bad idea is those companies then sharing information about children that should be private and parents should have a say in. Blaming parents when companies have outrageous privacy policies regarding child accounts is ridiculous. We have to teach our children to survive in this world. My 9 year old triplets all have greenlight cards. This article is very disturbing. But they are learning fiscal agency, which is something my generation wasn't taught at all. When I finally got a job (at 15) it was way too late for me. I spent it all on coin-op video games. That might be reasonable at 9, but not at 15.

candiodari 5y ago

Look, the EU now has decided to track ALL private communications by everyone talking to any European. "Because children"! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27753727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27753727 How does this compare to that? Note that this is after they've chosen that using medical information is fair game for debt recovery, so it's a matter of time before this information, too, is used for that. Sadly our societies have chosen that surveillance is the future, and a lot will be needed to fight it at this point. Is the fight to focus on really that some banks might use this info to market loans? I mean, sure, it can damage people, but ... not nearly as much as government surveillance will.

chrisgd 5y ago

A lot of old people yelling at clouds in this thread. Needs, wants, in my day, get the belt, etc. I want my child to be safe online and I want them to be able to communicate with their friends through the medium most children are using. These two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive and I can still be a good parent.