Apple knew a supplier was using child labor but took 3 years to fully cut ties
<i>Apple discovered additional workers as young as 14 years old during an audit just three months later.</i><p>Historically, ages 12 to 14 were traditional <i>coming of age</i> birthdays. (I think this is where we get the Jewish bar mitzvah, as just one example.) In other words, you were considered to be <i>an adult</i> by the age of 14, which aligns with what we generally know about human development in terms of you typically develop executive function about age 12 and it takes a couple of years of practice to get meaningfully good at it (though, granted, research suggests additional brain development continues to about age 25).<p>In the US, it wasn&#x27;t that many generations back that we routinely had kids in rural areas quit school after the eighth grade to work the fields. That means they were probably around 13 or 14 years old.<p>My father dropped out of high school when he was sixteen because he was a big guy, it was the midst of The Great Depression and he could &quot;earn a man&#x27;s wage&quot; because he could work hard like a grown man. His lack of formal education was not stigmatizing at that time. Now the military wants more education, but he had no problem going up in rank and making a good career for himself as a high school drop out.<p>I&#x27;ve read some pieces some years back that indicate that when first world countries (for lack of a better term) go to third world countries and insist that kids aren&#x27;t allowed to work, they actively interfere with survival for individuals in that place who are expected to work and do not have a social safety net. When we show up and impose our &quot;high standards&quot; to make us feel morally superior, we do so from a very privileged perspective and don&#x27;t think about how that interacts with reality on the ground.<p>There are American teens who work because they are part of a poor family and they need that money to help feed themselves. That happens in the US, yet we think all teenagers in some other country are supposed to have some pampered existence with parents providing for them while they laze around and maybe tend to their schooling.<p>I don&#x27;t know what the solution is, but I do know that it&#x27;s a complicated issue and the headline here and the article aren&#x27;t treating it with any nuance at all.