When I first heard about the videos made for babies I just thought they were stupid. I was right, of course, and now a child advocacy group has filed a complaint with the FTC. The videos are supposed to make babies smarter producing your own little Einsteins. Of course most existing evidence says that watching tv (content does NOT matter) is bad for very young children (under 2 yrs). ...But nevermind that. I wasn't going to post on this until I read this statement from one of the manufacturers:
"[The complaint with the FTC] is making the assumption that parents don't know what they're doing and can't make an intelligent decision for themselves...It's time we let the parents make these decisions."
two words: Britney Spears. Heck I'll even toss in a few more: childhood obesity epidemic. Yea, it's really clear that parents are capable of making intelligent decisions for their children. Hell, they can't even make intelligent decisions for themselves (look who was elected president). When given the choice between a commercial blitz and sound, or at least available, scientific evidence, commercials win. Yes, there are plenty of parents who do make good choices for their children, but they aren't buying the videos in the first place; the companies making these products don't make any money off of "intelligent decisions," they profit from the stupid.
At the same time, I'm not sure that the videos should be labled as evil, or whatever the group wants, because it seems to me that it is just Darwinism at work. Stupid parents are likely to have stupid children (anyway) and we need waste disposal engineers in this country, especially if were going to kick out all the illegal immigrants.
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