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Dangerous suggestions for children
Today I stumbled across a web site which has suggestions for how kids can make money. I have never been so scared to share a web site with my children before. Across a number of articles there are several suggestions that a great idea for kids to make money is for them to take unwanted or unused toys and sell them on eBay.
Now, aside from needing to brief your child on the security measures of selling on eBay on both protecting personal and financial information as well as placing boundaries that allow for safe exchange of goods for cash - how safe is it to introduce the idea of selling household items online to children?
In all seriousness, I'd be scared to introduce the concept because I would be concerned I'd then be kissing goodbye other household goods that my children could not find a purpose for. I mean who would need a food processor, jewellery or a medicare care, right? Seriously, what happened to the idea of going out, working and earning money instead of taking your goods to the online hock-shop?
The thought of teaching my children about eBay scares the b'geepers out of me - what about you?
Have a little faith in your kids and their common sense as well as sense in what's right (and what's theirs) ?
What age group do you reckon those suggestions were aimed at? They'd need to be literate, have a clue about money, time... what minimum age does that set?
If I may comment on the site you discuss here, as I am the owner of it, I would like to say that selling items one ebay for children is recommended with adult supervision only, as you have to be 18 to have an ebay account anyways. Absoulutly no where does it say anything about letting your young child wonder freely on the internet. I give many ways for children to make money, including going out and working for it. It is simply an alternative method for older children who want to explore other options to make money. It is every parents own responsibility to watch their children online ond off.
I am sorry that the whole idea "scares the b'geepers out of" you, but I have a legitimate, info filled website which I am proud to have people explore to help children come up with ideas to make money.
I otherwise found your site as interesting, and am in no way bashing your opinions, I just wanted this to be two sided. Thank You.
Perhaps my view is skewed as my eldest is only 6yo and fully understands the concepts of time, money as well as additional costs such as shipping. I attribute this, in part each, to his natural giftedness in mathematics, the way we use a hands-on approach to learning at home and his exposure to all these things through our business that runs from home.
He is also very computer literate and would have no troubles setting up an eBay account to get himself started. He has his own (monitored) email account already.
So, in our home, we already have a minimum age of 6yo. I can't speak for other homes of course as I benchmark on my own experience. However, I do take it that you are suggesting that it would be older than this.
To the owner of the site referred to in this post,
Certainly, my opinion of your suggestion about eBay is not to suggest that your entire site is in any way inappropriate. If I thought that it was not a site with relevant information then I would not have linked back to it for people to check out for themselves. Of course, it was just one of many suggestions that you have made.
Perhaps, contextually you can see my concern on this suggestion when having a particularly bright child who may, or perhaps already has, simply ticked an 'I am at least X years old' box to simply obtain access to what he wants. We certainly do our best to supervise his online movements at the time he is online but we have an active household and we learned very quickly when he was just two that even safe bookmarked sites can lead astray as our son found his way from a child-focussed Disney web site to a MacDonalds site through advertising and other external links too.
As we know that we cannot be there every minute to watch we have wrapped his part of our network up in Fortinet gear and have logs of every page he visits (over 10Meg of logs per 4 hours), restrict his time online using this control device, determine which sites he can't visit or can only visit during certain times of the day and so forth. Our measures are made to match the calibre of child that we have somehow managed to produce!
I hope that provides some context! :)
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