Mar. 29—The easiest way to rally people to your cause can be to focus on the way it affects children.

Hunger in a foreign country? Show starving children. War in a foreign country? Show the youngest victims.

Everyone does it. Health care? How does it impact children? Education? Easy one. Show the children. Economy, immigration, environment? Children, children, children.

But, if we are so focused on the children, how do so many things about children keep slipping past?

“Quiet on Set” is a new docuseries from Investigation Discovery that takes a hard, and sometimes gut-punching, look at the world of television made with and targeted toward tweens and teens. In particular, it focuses on Nickelodeon and Dan Schneider, a powerhouse producer responsible for a dozen of the channel’s shows and some of its biggest stars.

Schneider and Nickelodeon divorced in 2018 with allegations arising about workplace behavior. “Quiet on Set” builds on that, and Schneider has addressed some of the claims and denied others, notably those involving sexualizing the kids on his shows.

“I definitely owe some people a pretty strong apology,” he said in a YouTube video.

It isn’t the only video to come out since the release. Actors who endured sexual, physical or emotional mistreatment by adults on their various television shows have stepped forward. If the #MeToo movement empowered women to speak up, “Quiet on Set” seems to have done the same for former child actors.

The question to ask now is what happens next?

There are thousands of child actors participating in everything from commercials to blockbuster movies. With the number of productions happening on location, this isn’t just a Hollywood problem.

Every state needs to address its responsibility to keep underage artists safe. This has been tackled in the past, with limits put in place to prevent overwork or to protect money. But more needs to be done to acknowledge that children are still children regardless of how much money they are making and how famous they are.

If we recognize parents aren’t always going to be responsible custodians of their children’s paychecks, we need to also realize they might not be good stewards of their children’s working situations.

When parents are managers and agents, their children become a cash cow to be milked for the good of the family. Protecting their assets is important, but so is having someone advocate for the best interest of the child , and that shouldn’t be someone who gets 10% of the cut.

While attention is being brought to what kids should be able to read, and while people are called out as groomers, we need to stop having political fights about what might impact children. Instead, we could take action on what should be a nonpartisan issue by which real kids are being affected.

Every state has the ability to take bipartisan steps to protect working child actors on set, and it’s time everyone stops being quiet about it.

Lori Falce is the Tribune-Review community engagement editor and an opinion columnist. For more than 30 years, she has covered Pennsylvania politics, Penn State, crime and communities. She joined the Trib in 2018. She can be reached at lfalce@triblive.com.