On Jul 26, 2009, at 11:00 AM, j. eric townsend wrote:
Jared Spool wrote:
Then Dr. John's Products released a line of children's power
toothbrushes. (Subsequently acquired by Proctor & Gamble.) The
battery powered devices only have an On switch and automatically
turn off after 3 minutes. The 3 minute run time forces the child to
brush the entire period.
To be pedantic, it forces the motor to run for 3 minutes. It
certainly doesn't weld itself to the child's hand, take over their
neurons, and force the toothbrush into the child's mouth.
Children who use the toothbrush regularly demonstrate substantial
better long-term oral health than children who don't.
The real question is: "why do they use it?"
Is it simply because the motor is on and it's fun? Because they
know how long to use it? If the former, is there a less
environmentally stressful way to make it fun? If the latter, would
a simple egg timer have worked just as well and saved on natural
resources?
Sure, convincing kids to brush their teeth is something we can
probably all agree is good, but is making a battery powered
toothbrush the right way to go about it? What's the fully-loaded
cost of that bit of kit compared to a traditional toothbrush + a
little parent/child education?
Would simply asking the parent to brush their teeth at the same time
as their child solve the problem while creating a positive parent-
child interaction?
Over the past 20+ years, the ADA has tried a variety of solutions.
Nothing has been as successful as the introduction of children's
powered toothbrushes.
Now, you can debate whether they missed something or the resulting
design is somehow suboptimal. However, that misses the point of this
discussion.
This discussion, as I understand it, is about whether designs that
unknowingly influence behavioral changes is somehow unethical. Here we
have a design that has produced positive results by doing just that.
Is it wrong? Should the devices be taken off the market? Should
designers have a code of ethics that suggest they shouldn't engage in
such projects?
That's what I want to know.
Jared
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