Hello fellow Steemians!
It's been a minute since I've posted anything but this question has been kind of nagging at me and I would love to hear what you all think.
In the wake of recent revelations in Hollywood - Weinstein, Spacey and co. and the cries for help from former child actors such as Corey Feldman. I'm interested to know why it is, despite child labour laws being relatively strict across the board throughout the Western World that the entertainment industry seemingly gets a free pass in all of this? The obvious answer is evident to me in that lots of movies and TV shows are in need of child actors but is this really a good enough reason? Young kids used to be chimney sweeps, for obvious reasons. Did this make it okay? (Hint: It was dangerous and lots of them died).
I'm not necessarily saying that we should stop this practice entirely, but as most people have noticed, the effects of fame and stardom on young children can tend to be quite traumatic and often leads to very serious problems such as drug and sex addictions, severe alienation and depression and even suicides. I don't believe this is a decision that children are capable of making, and it rarely is. This is more often than not a situation where parents are proverbially pimping out their own children in hopes of easy money (and in some cases it seems, quite literally).
As somewhat of a libertarian/conservative it seems odd to me that I'm sitting here asking for more restrictions on what people can and cannot do, however I'm not an anarchist and I do believe that government serves a purpose (see necessary evil) in many situations and at the very top of that pile I would consider the protection of children and the defence of the defenceless to be of the utmost importance.
Please help out by adding to the conversation or perhaps resteeming. I would really like to see this question forced in to the mainstream and the discussion to be had. Any suggestions, solutions anything. I'm not saying we are going to save all of the children of the world or if any of us are going to be able to change anything but if these conversations aren't being had then we can be certain that nothing is going to change.
Thanks for reading :)