Someone posed a question in /r/bitcoin on Reddit asking if kids should be indoctrinated marketed to about the wonderful benefits of Bitcoin, other than drugs and gambling of course.

Bitcoin should “market” to kids (self.Bitcoin)
submitted 10 hours ago by Euphorbium
Well, maybe not market, but kids should be educated about it. There should be some campaigns targeting young children, similar to raspberry pi foundation teaching kids to code. Children are not stupid, nor as ignorant as adults, they will understand this if explained correctly and they can influence their parents a lot. If you think this would be somehow unethical, just think about all the crapfood advertisement targeted to children. This would be beneficial to kids, as it would help them understand current monetary system way better. How should this be done? I don’t know, but lets brainstorm. Maybe some bitcoin related mobile apps directed to kids are needed?

Some other Redditors wondered aloud however, what’s so wrong with gambling anyways? You should get your kids hooked on gambling too!

astrolabe 3 points 6 hours ago

I agree that children are a very good use case for bitcoin. They don’t have credit cards, but want to purchase things on the internet. There is a bit of a chicken and egg situation with not much for them to buy (I can think of the humble bundle) and not many kids with bitcoins. Improving either side of this relation would be helpful.
I gave my God son a small amount of bitcoin after explaining the system to him, showed him the transactions and blocks coming in on http://blockchain.info/, and the trades appearing on http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/.
I didn’t tell him about the bitcoin gambling sites, but he’s capable of discovering them himself. I’m not sure whether exposing children to gambling is a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe they could become addicted to gambling at an early age, but maybe they will have the experience of losing all their money when it doesn’t really matter, and it will serve as an innoculation.

 

Lentil-Soup 4 points 5 hours ago

but maybe they will have the experience of losing all their money when it doesn’t really matter, and it will serve as an innoculation.

So much this. My 7 year old saw me playing Satoshi Circle and asked what I was doing. I explained it to him and he seemed interested. I gave him 100 millibits and let him go crazy. After he was done, he said that it was interesting because it was both good and bad. He said it was good because you have a chance of winning a lot of money, but bad because you will probably lose all of it instead.

Don’t you think it might be a bad idea to introduce kids to gambling, an activity that can trigger all sorts of compulsive behaviors on young malleable minds? That if they lose Bitcoins they don’t just go “oh well, I won’t do that again” and might do as some gamblers do, keep wanting to chase that big score?

 

Or maybe it’s all part of the plan? Hmmm…

 

 

BITCOIN! Get ’em hooked while they’re young!