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Is it really much of a scam to lie with transparent childishness to the grown-ups around you? The way Moonee and Scooty and eventually Jancy go about getting their ice creams is by telling fibs that reveal the simple truth of their lives: they don’t have any money. And what is the alternative, exac…

[...] You are walking through your own dreams, and realizing they are all copyrighted.

Capitalism, like all abusive relationships, creates a sense of learned helplessness in its victims. We are complicit in what it makes of us: we want so badly for what it tells us to be true. Of course we do. I…

“It is just so clear, marketing is terrible for children. It limits their imaginations. It makes them sick,” Campbell told me. “As a kid, you figure out who you are by being around other people. . . . It’s challenging enough to be developing your social relationships on these disembodied platforms.…

It’s easy to laugh about Teen Boss; to see it as just a passing meme or a joke. But what it represents about the way young people are failed by platform capitalism is a serious concern. The problems with Teen Boss will outlive Teen Boss, and they speak to a society-wide dereliction of responsibilit…

“It’s too bad because girls at the ages [Teen Boss] is targeted to, ages eight to eleven, are going through a really tricky developmental moment where they become more withdrawn,” said Melissa Campbell of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) when we spoke by phone in February. Campbe…