According to statistics published on this news from Business Insider, citing data from Thorn, a nonprofit that protects children from sexual exploitation, 40 percent of children under 13 years old use Facebook, and 40 percent of those surveyed also have Instagram accounts.
Children using social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram is a controversial topic and has given rise to the companies behind these platforms to implement features, such as facial recognition technology, so parents can monitor their children’s social media use.
It is controversial, especially to the United States regulator, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), that recently wanted to ban Meta, the parent company of social media apps like Facebook and Instagram, from monetizing the data of children. The FTC also wanted to further limit the implementation of facial recognition technology, a feature already being used to control a child’s social media use.
The FTC is an independent agency of the United States government with the mission to enforce civil antitrust law and promote consumer protection.
Ban Meta from monetizing children’s data
The FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection director Samuel Levine said Facebook is repeatedly violating its privacy promises.
“The company’s recklessness has put young users at risk, and Facebook needs to answer for its failures,” he added.
The FTC issued a proposal yesterday and called for a blanket prohibition on the Facebook parent company’s capability to commercialize data it collects from its users aged 18 and younger, including those who use the company’s virtual reality products.
This proposal comes in response to what the U.S. regulator alleged were violations of an order issued back in 2020 amidst the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The Cambridge Analytica data scandal is an incident that occurred in the 2010s wherein personal data from millions of Facebook users were collected without their permission by Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm.
The regulator also accused Meta of misleading parents about how and to what extent they could control who their kids connect with via the Messenger Kids app. They also said the Facebook parent company misrepresented “the access it provided some app developers to private user data.”
“Parents can manage their kids’ contact list, and monitor messages on the Messenger Kids app. When kids block contacts, parents are notified,” said the official description of Messenger Kids on Google Play.
The FTC’s order asks Meta to pay a penalty worth $5 billion and complete a privacy review of all its new or tweaked products.
The proposed measures would apply to Facebook and the rest of Meta’s products, such as Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. Furthermore, the FTC also wants to strengthen the restrictions on Meta’s use of facial recognition technology.
Meta fights back
However, Meta is fighting back. It described this move from the FTC as a “political stunt” and said it would “vigorously fight.”
“Let’s be clear about what the FTC is trying to do: usurp the authority of Congress to set industry-wide standards and instead single out an American company while allowing Chinese companies, like TikTok, to operate without constraint on American soil,” the company said. “FTC Chair Lina Khan’s insistence on using any measure — however baseless — to antagonize American business has reached a new low.”
