4 ms·

Having played TF2 and such as a kid, the bottleneck was always asking your parents for their credit card or getting steam cards/vanilla credit cards for your bi

Having played TF2 and such as a kid, the bottleneck was always asking your parents for their credit card or getting steam cards/vanilla credit cards for your birthday. I think it's hard to form a gambling addiction if you don't really have any money for gambling. You learn pretty fast that you get better value trading than gambling. I don't see how its much worse than baseball cards (we also had "top trumps" and pokemon cards and such). Looking back on my childhood, I think the effect of internet porn far outweighed the effect of gambling-adjacent stuff like loot boxes. I think the real victims of gambling in games are usually adults who have a much greater ability to dump their life's savings into a game.

johnnyanmac 2y ago
>Looking back on my childhood, I think the effect of internet porn far outweighed the effect of gambling-adjacent stuff like loot boxes. I think that's more because people don't want to teach children about sex, while people do demonstrate what gambling is early on. Ones much more complex and if you're letting a kid find their own answers unguided, that can potentially be disasterous. That's not even mentioning theneffect of instilling shame on your own biological body and treating parts of it as taboo. If parents refuse to talk about something, it can be taken as either a bad thing, a scary thing, or a complicated thing.
- Funes- 2y ago
  >I think that's more because people don't want to teach children about sex Come on now. It's hard to find anything more immediately exciting and alluring than sex, especially for teenagers. The biological imperatives and inclinations are too strong regarding sex for virtually everyone, compared to anything related to gambling. And OP is absolutely right that the barrier to entry is a great deterrent in the case of gambling, as well. Just based on that alone, easy-access, sex-related stuff is always going to have a potentially greater effect on almost anyone, regardless of their previous knowledge about it or warnings received by other people during their childhood. >people do demonstrate what gambling is early on Talk about going out on a limb. What are you basing this affirmation on? I don't see any parents lending any word of advice to their children about gambling-like activities, in any case, as most of them indulge in those themselves, let alone their own kids.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >t's hard to find anything more immediately exciting and alluring than sex, especially for teenagers. And? More reason to educate them early. Similar to why we have a strong desire while young to devour sweets. Now imagine we ignore diet and leave a kid to eat whatever they feel like. >compared to anything related to gambling. My theme is education and awareness, not playing a one up contest on what is worse. Could we both agree that these are factors to teach to kids early? >What are you basing this affirmation on? My upbringing and education? You think 3rd/4th graders learning about "number cubes" won't equate that to gambling? They also love talking about card games later on. Parent taught me plenty of common games as well, alongside Dominoes. And ofc Z the media. Kids have eyes and can see adults gamble. They don't need a deep dive into a dedicated class to learn the deal (but yes, I was taught that gambling is bad).
    - globular-toast 2y ago
      Curious how you think education would help with porn. I had sex education prior to puberty. I still think porn was enormously harmful.
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        Ymmv as always. There will always be great and not great teachers. Really hard to judge on any individual case.
        globular-toast 2y ago
        But what would a great teacher teach them? That's what I'm curious about. Is this just an awareness thing? Like say "by the way, porn exists, but wanking off to it is nothing like real sex and it might make the real thing worse". Is this accepted now, or is it still just one dude's theory (the your brain on porn guy)?
        ikesau 2y ago
        [dead]

johnnyanmac 2y ago

>Looking back on my childhood, I think the effect of internet porn far outweighed the effect of gambling-adjacent stuff like loot boxes. I think that's more because people don't want to teach children about sex, while people do demonstrate what gambling is early on. Ones much more complex and if you're letting a kid find their own answers unguided, that can potentially be disasterous. That's not even mentioning theneffect of instilling shame on your own biological body and treating parts of it as taboo. If parents refuse to talk about something, it can be taken as either a bad thing, a scary thing, or a complicated thing.

Funes- 2y ago
>I think that's more because people don't want to teach children about sex Come on now. It's hard to find anything more immediately exciting and alluring than sex, especially for teenagers. The biological imperatives and inclinations are too strong regarding sex for virtually everyone, compared to anything related to gambling. And OP is absolutely right that the barrier to entry is a great deterrent in the case of gambling, as well. Just based on that alone, easy-access, sex-related stuff is always going to have a potentially greater effect on almost anyone, regardless of their previous knowledge about it or warnings received by other people during their childhood. >people do demonstrate what gambling is early on Talk about going out on a limb. What are you basing this affirmation on? I don't see any parents lending any word of advice to their children about gambling-like activities, in any case, as most of them indulge in those themselves, let alone their own kids.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  >t's hard to find anything more immediately exciting and alluring than sex, especially for teenagers. And? More reason to educate them early. Similar to why we have a strong desire while young to devour sweets. Now imagine we ignore diet and leave a kid to eat whatever they feel like. >compared to anything related to gambling. My theme is education and awareness, not playing a one up contest on what is worse. Could we both agree that these are factors to teach to kids early? >What are you basing this affirmation on? My upbringing and education? You think 3rd/4th graders learning about "number cubes" won't equate that to gambling? They also love talking about card games later on. Parent taught me plenty of common games as well, alongside Dominoes. And ofc Z the media. Kids have eyes and can see adults gamble. They don't need a deep dive into a dedicated class to learn the deal (but yes, I was taught that gambling is bad).
  - globular-toast 2y ago
    Curious how you think education would help with porn. I had sex education prior to puberty. I still think porn was enormously harmful.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      Ymmv as always. There will always be great and not great teachers. Really hard to judge on any individual case.
      - globular-toast 2y ago
        But what would a great teacher teach them? That's what I'm curious about. Is this just an awareness thing? Like say "by the way, porn exists, but wanking off to it is nothing like real sex and it might make the real thing worse". Is this accepted now, or is it still just one dude's theory (the your brain on porn guy)?
        ikesau 2y ago
        [dead]