Momentum builds for US laws to protect children from Big Tech

Senior Democratic and Republican members of Congress say they are determined to rein in the ability of large technology companies to target children, setting up a new front in the push to impose stricter regulations on Big Tech.

Members of both the Senate and the House of Representatives have told the Financial Times they want to pass new laws to curb social media companies that offer products aimed at the under-16s, particularly around issues of data and privacy.

With several companies offering versions of their platforms aimed at younger users — and Facebook’s plan to introduce an Instagram for kids — the call for stronger safeguarding now has a growing coalition of bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.

“Kids’ time online has skyrocketed during the pandemic, and the absence of legal safeguards to protect children as they traverse the online ecosystem is more glaring than ever,” said Ed Markey, a Democratic member of the Senate commerce committee. “We should all be able to agree that corporate profits cannot come before kids’ wellbeing.”

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the most senior Republican on the House of Representatives energy and commerce committee, said: “For far too long, these companies have refused to be forthcoming about the harms their platforms can cause, such as negative impacts on our children’s mental health.” She added: “Right now all options are on the table.” 

Protecting children

At a hearing last month, members of the House energy and commerce committee grilled Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai, the chief executives of Facebook, Twitter and Google owner Alphabet respectively, subjecting them to a barrage of accusations about how they track children online, expose children to toxic content, are designed to be addictive and ultimately impact children’s mental health. 

There is a particular backlash against tailored applications for children aged under 13, who are banned from Facebook, and only allowed on YouTube with parental consent.

Google’s YouTube video platform has had a children’s version since 2015 which hosts family-friendly content and advertising. Facebook launched Messenger Kids in 2017, and is now working on an Instagram for kids, which — like Messenger Kids — will be “ads-free”, a move to address concerns that children are being commercialised online.

The companies argue that creating these platforms, which offer extra parental controls, better protects children who might otherwise be exposed to harmful content if they lie about their age to use the main platforms. A 2019 report by the UK communications regulator Ofcom found that more than half of under-13s have a social media profile. YouTube says it shuts down tens of thousands of accounts each week that belong to under-13s.

The initiatives have been met with scepticism, with critics suggesting they are driven by profits and not genuine regard for safety. Advocacy groups argue that even if targeted advertising is not shown to younger users, the companies can collect certain data on them under the prospect of future use and get users addicted to the platform earlier.

“It’s not addressing the underage kids on the existing platform; it’s creating new demand and getting loyalty to their platform,” said Josh Golin, executive director of the Campaign for A Commercial Free Childhood. He added that Facebook’s plan for a children’s Instagram was likely to be about competing with its fast-growing rival TikTok, which is highly popular among Generation Z users. 

The platforms have indicated these alternatives would be safe, educational spaces. However, in a letter sent last week to YouTube’s chief executive Susan Wojcicki, the House subcommittee on economic and consumer policy described YouTube Kids as a “wasteland of vapid, consumerist content”. 

Another letter sent to Zuckerberg last week by Democratic lawmakers, including Markey, called on Facebook to “invest in efforts” to lower the number of pre-teen users on its platform rather than build an Instagram for kids.

Jim Steyer, lawyer and chief executive of the non-profit group Common Sense Media, said the companies should be tougher when it came to “age gating” — or age verification — given they already use artificial intelligence for advertisement targeting and content moderation purposes. “They should’ve solved age gating — these are trillion-dollar companies.” 

Facebook said in a statement that it was undertaking “ongoing work” to keep underage users off Instagram.

YouTube said it had made “significant investments in the YouTube Kids app to make it safer and to serve more educational and enriching content”.

Legislative action

There are three broad areas in which politicians are seeking to legislate: children’s’ online privacy; the content they can access online; and the research technology companies carry out on them.

On privacy, Markey has for years been pushing for a “Coppa 2.0” — a stronger version of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act passed in 1998 — which would ban internet companies from collecting personal and location information from anyone under 13 without parental consent, and from anyone 13 to 15 years old without the user’s consent. A similar bill has been promoted in the House of Representatives by Kathy Castor, a Democratic representative from Florida.

On content, Markey has promoted a Kids Act which would ban certain practices from any website and app designed for or aimed at children. The act, a version of which has also been proposed in the House, would ban “auto-play” and push alerts in an attempt to make the platforms less addictive. It would also ban hugely popular “unboxing videos”, clips of children unwrapping new toys, which critics say are another way of advertising products to children.

The most likely area for legislative action, say experts, is to force companies to hand over more of the data they have on their child users — information which campaigners say the businesses collect but are reluctant to share.

Lori Trahan, a Democratic representative from Massachusetts, said: “We want to understand the types of data that they are collecting on our children. When you are launching an app like Instagram for kids, what kind of data is being collected on our six to 12 year olds?”

While much of this legislation has been proposed before but never reached a vote, campaigners are hopeful that Instagram’s plans will push politicians to take action.

Markey is likely to launch fresh versions of his proposed legislation in the coming weeks, say Democratic aides, while others are working on new proposals. Trahan said she would launch a new bill forcing companies to work with researchers to determine the impact their products are having on children.

It will then be up to Democratic leaders in the House and Senate to decide whether the issue should be put to a vote, with campaigners optimistic that the conditions are right for something to pass.

“On [Capitol] Hill, we have incredible receptivity on the children’s issues,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of Center for Digital Democracy, a Washington-based non-profit group. “It’s less controversial politically . . . and we have many more voices [than we used to].”