According to the article, Group Calls for Teen Privacy Protections on Facebook, MySpace, several groups want to expand the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act to cover teens between 13 and 18 years old. The reason for the concern is that they want teens to be left alone when it comes to data collection and targeted marketing when using social networking sites.
If this proposal goes into effect, then it could hurt social networks plan to tailor online advertisements to teen behaviors.
What do you think?
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As many social networking sites don't have these safeguards, people will ask for the extreme. These will need to be built into such services going forward, as most people are not against reaching out to young people, it's just they need to be protected.
mp/m
Posted by: Mike Maddaloni - The Hot Iron | April 11, 2008 at 07:33 AM
A quick survey of my college freshmen last semester revealed many weren't thinking about online safeguards and marketing attempts related to social networking. Yet, teens are compelled to social network for identity expression, peer relationships, social currency and interests... and many regulators aren't realizing the extent, but marketing persuaders are all over it. We need to protect children under 18. This requires structure, and not letting market forces make the decisions. Probably will lead to an over-correction but that is preferred to exposing dangerous vulnerabilities of millions of teens.
Posted by: Sara | April 11, 2008 at 08:58 AM
Thanks Mike and Sara for sharing your thoughts. I believe that something will be done to protect young people. We do tend to over protect in this country so hopefully whatever happens won't hurt the social networking experience.
Posted by: Jason Jacobsohn | April 12, 2008 at 07:08 AM