The head of the Federal Trade Commission says the agency is pushing a robust agenda of actions and policies to help safeguard children’s privacy online.
The ongoing work will include toughened enforcement of a long-standing law governing kids’ online privacy and eyeing the algorithms used by social media platforms targeting young people.
“Children’s privacy is enormously important and we want to make sure we’re doing everything we can … to vigorously protect children’s privacy and protect them from data abuses,” said Lina Khan, who has led the consumer-protection agency for a year. She spoke in an interview over Zoom with The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Around the country, parents’ concern has deepened over the impact of social media on kids. Frances Haugen, a former Facebook data scientist, stunned Congress and the public last fall when she brought to light internal company research showing apparent serious harm to some teens from Facebook’s Instagram platform.
