8 ms·

13yearold spent $64k of her parents'money on mobile games without them realizing

28 points by dlb007 3y ago

max_ 3y ago
>13 year old knew what she was doing Yeah right...
- plewd 3y ago
  Obviously she understood that she was doing something bad. It's weird that people on social media expect 13 year olds to understand the value of money when they've never worked for it.
  - MagicMoonlight 3y ago
    13 years old is old. I don’t know why people are always this revisionist and pretend children aren’t sentient. By 13 you’re mostly developed. You lack life experience so you’re a little naive and you lack the final development of the brain but you’re basically a finished person. There’s no way that at 13 you don’t understand that spending 64k is wrong. That’s an absolutely absurd amount of money. It’s like when people like you say they don’t know murder is wrong. You don’t have to be 25 to know stealing 60k is wrong.
    - arlcode 3y ago
      It's fairly easy to imagine a 13 old knowing that whatever they are doing is "wrong" but totally underestimating the scale and impact. Perhaps they were expecting a few harsh words at most and that was a price they were "ready to pay". "Being mocked by the other kids" and "going a little bit over budget" could have sounded equally bad in their young mind. It's fair to assume that they didn't intended to hurt their family this much and this is one reason why society severely restricts what people can do at this age.
    - YourDadVPN 3y ago
      At 29, I don't feel like I was "basically finished" until 25 or so, and feel significantly more mature than I was even a year ago. I'm very interested to know why you think 13 year olds are mostly finished developing.
      - willcipriano 3y ago
        Extended adolescence is a byproduct of postmodernity. By the time my grandmother was 25 she had been married for a decade and had 2 children herself. I had a job at 13 and would've spent my own money on something like this. We treat adults like children so children behave like infants.
        r2_pilot 3y ago
        The human brain does not fully develop until around the mid-20s. https://hr.mit.edu/static/worklife/youngadult/brain.html https://hr.mit.edu/static/worklife/youngadult/brain.html
        willcipriano 3y ago
        Alexander conquered most of the known world with a "undeveloped brain".
        r2_pilot 3y ago
        You seemingly state that as a positive goal. I posit that many people would have preferred to be left alone and not killed or subjugated. Perhaps if he had been prevented from those actions until after maturity, he would have chosen different actions.
        spicymapotofu 3y ago
        To rephrase the other user's [correct] sentiment, a scientific determination of brain development has more to do with myelin on axons than maturity regarding emotions, finances, or anything else we actually judge people on.
    - Tangurena2 3y ago
      My parents never talked about money. Mostly due to my dad's toxic "no one deserves to know how much I make" attitude. I was over 40 before I finally got a grip on financial knowledge - despite me having jobs since I was 14.
  - lm28469 3y ago
    I understood the value of money before 10 because my parents gave me like 1$ a week to buy candies and I can tell you you need to budget real good if you want them to last until sunday
- wadd1e 3y ago
  It's anecdata but I certainly understood the value of money enough to not blow off 64 grand(or really any money without asking always my parents) when I was 13(which was not very long ago for me), and my friends certainly never did such a thing either. She clearly either did know what she was doing, or it's a very unfortunate failure in terms of maturing and acting like a 13 year old. I can't attest to what could cause such a failure but I can't imagine a world where most 13 year olds think it's ok to spend 64 grand on a game(regardless of how predatory it is) with no concern about their activities.
rowanG077 3y ago
I don't understand why we as a society allow such ridiculous amounts of money to be asked for in mobile phone app. The first political entity that wants to ban microtransactions has my vote.
- veave 3y ago
  Why not? How about you don't spend the money if you don't want to, and let people do whatever they want with what they earnt?
  - MagicMoonlight 3y ago
    Because they are predatory and have ruined the experience of using apps. Apps are trash now, it’s all just gambling and attempts to milk money out of you. People have gone back and changed old apps to add predatory features.
  - rowanG077 3y ago
    What an absurd statement. By that same sentiment drugs, weapons, organs etc. should be freely available in the market. Which they obviously aren't for good reasons. Basically every modern society recognizes that people need to be protected from themselves in some capacity. For the same reason we don't have true capitalism.
    - veave 3y ago
      Maybe they should be.
      - phone8675309 3y ago
        Give up your organs to the highest bidder first and then we can talk
        veave 3y ago
        No, I don't want to. This is about giving people a choice, not about forcing them into it.
mcv 3y ago
I'm extremely reluctant to let my kids spend money on in-app purchases, and I'm extremely reluctant to do it myself. My youngest is currently begging for Robux, but he can't explain what he wants to spend them on. My oldest has his own allowance that he's free to spend how he likes, and a lot of it is going to purchasing various games, but the amount he can spend is very limited and he seems to be pretty careful about what he spends it on. I think a shared hosted Minecraft server with some friends is his latest expenditure, and I guess that makes sense. Years ago, I did discover that one of my kids had done some in-app purchases coming from my credit card which I never authorized. I immediately reverted it, and complained to Google that unauthorized purchases should not be possible. It's utterly ridiculous that it was possible back then. I hope they fixed that. Payments should always require explicit authorization from me to my bank.
- chii 3y ago
  > discover that one of my kids had done some in-app purchases coming from my credit card which I never authorized. if the kid stole the credit card information and used it, then it's not ridiculous - it's the same as stealing cash. It is the responsibility of the parents to punish the kid for stealing. They should know its not allowed - whether google did not confirm it or not is besides the point tbh.
  - mcv 3y ago
    No, the kid didn't steal anything. Just clicked the button to buy the in-game stuff, and Google deducted it from the credit card tied to my account without requiring any authorization. The fault here was entirely with Google.
    - rentalord 3y ago
      > clicked the button That was the authorization.
      - mcv 3y ago
        It wasn't. That's not how authorization works. A random game should not control my finances.
Borrible 3y ago
At least it wasn't spend on drugs and women.
- chii 3y ago
  would've at least had more fun with drugs and women imho.
  - Borrible 3y ago
    Not to mention in that case he could have blamed the drug dealer, the women, or their pimps.
Eumenes 3y ago
Parents fault. credit cards and bank accounts have alerts. Who doesn't check their account's multiple times per week? Even more so if you give your child Free reign
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
lionkor 3y ago
> While the girl said she didn't understand much about money or where it came from, she knew to delete chat records and payment transactions to hide evidence of her spending from her parents. I do see this as a complete parenting failure. Given she had such access that she can not only spend $64k, but also spend without daily / weekly / monthly limits, and also have access to chat logs (on her parents' phone ig?) and somehow was able to delete transactions (???) -- makes all that kind of the fault of the parents. Locking down a phone is not hard, even for mostly tech-illiterate people. It's a feature built into e.g. iPhones. This includes the parents having to manually authorize payments, app installations, and so on. This is a feature that has existed for a long time. Further, did the parents not notice her daughter looking at her phone so much? According to the article: > a teacher called to say she thought the girl might be addicted to mobile games after noticing how much time the 13-year-old spent on her phone Maybe these parents are just busy, or maybe this is the lesson they needed to learn that a phone isnt a replacement parent. But it's also likely that they're raising an "ipad kid", where the phone & games are used to shut the child up so the parents dont have to put in any effort.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  > raising an "ipad kid", where the phone & games are used to shut the child up so the parents dont have to put in any effort. "pay for it now with time w/ baby, or pay for it later with therapy" sounds like it was a 64k thing instead, but same idea.

28 points by dlb007 3y ago

max_ 3y ago

>13 year old knew what she was doing Yeah right...

plewd 3y ago
Obviously she understood that she was doing something bad. It's weird that people on social media expect 13 year olds to understand the value of money when they've never worked for it.
- MagicMoonlight 3y ago
  13 years old is old. I don’t know why people are always this revisionist and pretend children aren’t sentient. By 13 you’re mostly developed. You lack life experience so you’re a little naive and you lack the final development of the brain but you’re basically a finished person. There’s no way that at 13 you don’t understand that spending 64k is wrong. That’s an absolutely absurd amount of money. It’s like when people like you say they don’t know murder is wrong. You don’t have to be 25 to know stealing 60k is wrong.
  - arlcode 3y ago
    It's fairly easy to imagine a 13 old knowing that whatever they are doing is "wrong" but totally underestimating the scale and impact. Perhaps they were expecting a few harsh words at most and that was a price they were "ready to pay". "Being mocked by the other kids" and "going a little bit over budget" could have sounded equally bad in their young mind. It's fair to assume that they didn't intended to hurt their family this much and this is one reason why society severely restricts what people can do at this age.
  - YourDadVPN 3y ago
    At 29, I don't feel like I was "basically finished" until 25 or so, and feel significantly more mature than I was even a year ago. I'm very interested to know why you think 13 year olds are mostly finished developing.
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      Extended adolescence is a byproduct of postmodernity. By the time my grandmother was 25 she had been married for a decade and had 2 children herself. I had a job at 13 and would've spent my own money on something like this. We treat adults like children so children behave like infants.
      - r2_pilot 3y ago
        The human brain does not fully develop until around the mid-20s. https://hr.mit.edu/static/worklife/youngadult/brain.html https://hr.mit.edu/static/worklife/youngadult/brain.html
        willcipriano 3y ago
        Alexander conquered most of the known world with a "undeveloped brain".
        r2_pilot 3y ago
        You seemingly state that as a positive goal. I posit that many people would have preferred to be left alone and not killed or subjugated. Perhaps if he had been prevented from those actions until after maturity, he would have chosen different actions.
        spicymapotofu 3y ago
        To rephrase the other user's [correct] sentiment, a scientific determination of brain development has more to do with myelin on axons than maturity regarding emotions, finances, or anything else we actually judge people on.
  - Tangurena2 3y ago
    My parents never talked about money. Mostly due to my dad's toxic "no one deserves to know how much I make" attitude. I was over 40 before I finally got a grip on financial knowledge - despite me having jobs since I was 14.
- lm28469 3y ago
  I understood the value of money before 10 because my parents gave me like 1$ a week to buy candies and I can tell you you need to budget real good if you want them to last until sunday
wadd1e 3y ago
It's anecdata but I certainly understood the value of money enough to not blow off 64 grand(or really any money without asking always my parents) when I was 13(which was not very long ago for me), and my friends certainly never did such a thing either. She clearly either did know what she was doing, or it's a very unfortunate failure in terms of maturing and acting like a 13 year old. I can't attest to what could cause such a failure but I can't imagine a world where most 13 year olds think it's ok to spend 64 grand on a game(regardless of how predatory it is) with no concern about their activities.

rowanG077 3y ago

I don't understand why we as a society allow such ridiculous amounts of money to be asked for in mobile phone app. The first political entity that wants to ban microtransactions has my vote.

veave 3y ago
Why not? How about you don't spend the money if you don't want to, and let people do whatever they want with what they earnt?
- MagicMoonlight 3y ago
  Because they are predatory and have ruined the experience of using apps. Apps are trash now, it’s all just gambling and attempts to milk money out of you. People have gone back and changed old apps to add predatory features.
- rowanG077 3y ago
  What an absurd statement. By that same sentiment drugs, weapons, organs etc. should be freely available in the market. Which they obviously aren't for good reasons. Basically every modern society recognizes that people need to be protected from themselves in some capacity. For the same reason we don't have true capitalism.
  - veave 3y ago
    Maybe they should be.
    - phone8675309 3y ago
      Give up your organs to the highest bidder first and then we can talk
      - veave 3y ago
        No, I don't want to. This is about giving people a choice, not about forcing them into it.

mcv 3y ago

I'm extremely reluctant to let my kids spend money on in-app purchases, and I'm extremely reluctant to do it myself. My youngest is currently begging for Robux, but he can't explain what he wants to spend them on. My oldest has his own allowance that he's free to spend how he likes, and a lot of it is going to purchasing various games, but the amount he can spend is very limited and he seems to be pretty careful about what he spends it on. I think a shared hosted Minecraft server with some friends is his latest expenditure, and I guess that makes sense. Years ago, I did discover that one of my kids had done some in-app purchases coming from my credit card which I never authorized. I immediately reverted it, and complained to Google that unauthorized purchases should not be possible. It's utterly ridiculous that it was possible back then. I hope they fixed that. Payments should always require explicit authorization from me to my bank.

chii 3y ago
> discover that one of my kids had done some in-app purchases coming from my credit card which I never authorized. if the kid stole the credit card information and used it, then it's not ridiculous - it's the same as stealing cash. It is the responsibility of the parents to punish the kid for stealing. They should know its not allowed - whether google did not confirm it or not is besides the point tbh.
- mcv 3y ago
  No, the kid didn't steal anything. Just clicked the button to buy the in-game stuff, and Google deducted it from the credit card tied to my account without requiring any authorization. The fault here was entirely with Google.
  - rentalord 3y ago
    > clicked the button That was the authorization.
    - mcv 3y ago
      It wasn't. That's not how authorization works. A random game should not control my finances.

Borrible 3y ago

At least it wasn't spend on drugs and women.

chii 3y ago
would've at least had more fun with drugs and women imho.
- Borrible 3y ago
  Not to mention in that case he could have blamed the drug dealer, the women, or their pimps.

Eumenes 3y ago

Parents fault. credit cards and bank accounts have alerts. Who doesn't check their account's multiple times per week? Even more so if you give your child Free reign

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

lionkor 3y ago

> While the girl said she didn't understand much about money or where it came from, she knew to delete chat records and payment transactions to hide evidence of her spending from her parents. I do see this as a complete parenting failure. Given she had such access that she can not only spend $64k, but also spend without daily / weekly / monthly limits, and also have access to chat logs (on her parents' phone ig?) and somehow was able to delete transactions (???) -- makes all that kind of the fault of the parents. Locking down a phone is not hard, even for mostly tech-illiterate people. It's a feature built into e.g. iPhones. This includes the parents having to manually authorize payments, app installations, and so on. This is a feature that has existed for a long time. Further, did the parents not notice her daughter looking at her phone so much? According to the article: > a teacher called to say she thought the girl might be addicted to mobile games after noticing how much time the 13-year-old spent on her phone Maybe these parents are just busy, or maybe this is the lesson they needed to learn that a phone isnt a replacement parent. But it's also likely that they're raising an "ipad kid", where the phone & games are used to shut the child up so the parents dont have to put in any effort.

red-iron-pine 3y ago
> raising an "ipad kid", where the phone & games are used to shut the child up so the parents dont have to put in any effort. "pay for it now with time w/ baby, or pay for it later with therapy" sounds like it was a 64k thing instead, but same idea.