Michael Jackson's Legacy: Ban child labor in the entertainment industry

[Omaha Steve]

I didn't write this. I', only posting it for discussion.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gurley/detail?entry_id=43046

Okay, take a moment in the midst of your Michael Jackson sorrow and let's think, together, like epidemiologists here:

We in developed countries banned child labor for many reasons - but one of the primary reasons is the adverse health effects of child labor. One of the Victorian industries that objected the hardest to child labor bans was that of chimney sweeps - the argument being that only tiny humans (read: children) could fit inside a chimney. But then a scientist discovered the link in 1775 between being a child chimney sweep - and scrotal cancer from constant exposure to charcoal dust in trousers. This occupational-disease association was the beginning of child labor bans across industries.

Hundreds of years later, we've got a lone industry holdout which has remained exempt in developed countries - the entertainment industry. Even with restrictions on the hours worked, no other industry is allowed to employ children and babies.

Why should this child labor be stopped? I would suggest a hypothesis - that we have a clear association, like that of charcoal dust and cancer, between childhood exposure to fame and early death. I also would argue that the toxic exposure to fame is dose-dependent. Which is to say - the more famous you are as a child, the more likely you are to have a bad outcome. I would further argue that, like other reasons we've banned child labor in industries, there is also a developmental effect. In other words, the younger you are exposed to this toxic substance (fame), the greater your chances of a bad outcome.

If you view fame as a childhood poison, like asbestos, or charcoal dust, fame acts with life-shortening effect, and its impact is magnified by higher doses and earlier exposures. This is a potent epidemiologic argument for extending our current child labor ban to include our last holdout - the entertainment industry.

I would further argue that, besides early death, fame has a dose-dependent, and age-dependent association (perhaps causality) for two other highly destructive outcomes - substance abuse and mental health disorders. These high rates are also likely increased by earlier exposure to fame. While delaying the exposure to fame until adulthood may not completely prevent fame's destructive effects, it is likely that many vulnerable people will be more resistant at a later age. Furthermore, an adult can make informed decisions about fame exposure in a way that children are incapable of doing. There is also considerable anecdotal evidence that a child who is subjected to intense fame becomes developmentally delayed at the first age of exposure, resulting in delayed or even arrested maturation. The famous person is, for all intents and purposes, arrested at the age of earliest fame, lacking age-appropriate maturity, insight and/or impulse control.

FULL story at link.

[thereismore]

1. "toxic substance" fame is not a substance. The whole thing sounds like Taliban. nt

[lxlxlxl]

2. I totally efffing agree, but for different reasons.

I dont really care about fame/money and early death. I do care about how kids can be used to push bullshit messages to our own kids, and create cycles of entertainment and passivity that are really conservative and self-serving.

1) They use kids because they can get these kids for cheap, and get them to sing and do anything. They are growing kid actors and performers. That's just honest truth if you look at the Disney kids. It makes the kid artists subservient to the industry that creates them, and tells other kids at an early age that

2) Kid actors / musicians are only valuable in that they can be used to target kids as an audience. They have a built in uncritical audience, and stuns the growth of kids who think they can only enjoy things from their 'peers' although these peers arent even that.

[Berry Cool]

3. A problem no one seems to have considered yet.

What about films and plays in which children are required to play the roles of child characters? How are those roles going to be filled?

It's easy to say "No more child song-and-dance performing acts," or "No more TV commercials with kids peddling stuff to other kids." But what about legitimate forms of the arts for which the services of a person who actually resembles a child are sometimes required?