Press Releases

LOWELL, MA – Yesterday, Congresswoman Lori Trahan (MA-03), a former tech startup executive and member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee, grilled Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg about their companies’ efforts to target children to further grow their platforms’ usership.

Trahan’s full line of questioning can be accessed by CLICKING HERE or the image below:

 

 

Key Excerpts:

Trahan: Google and Facebook are not only doing a poor job of keeping our children under 13 off of YouTube and Instagram, as my colleagues have already mentioned today, but you are actively onboarding our children onto your ecosystem with apps like YouTube Kids, Facebook Messenger Kids, and now we’re hearing Instagram for Kids. These applications introduce our children to social media far too early and include manipulative design features intended to keep them hooked.

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Trahan: Will the recently reported Instagram app for Kids have endless scroll enabled? Yes or no?

Zuckerberg: Congresswoman, we are not done finalizing what the app is going to be. We’re actually still pretty early in designing this.

Trahan: Are you not sure? Or are you not sharing features? Look, another feature of concern is the filter that adds an unnatural but perfect glow for my 10-year-old to apply to her face. Is that feature going to be a part of Instagram Kids?

Zuckerberg: Congresswoman, I don’t know. I haven’t discussed this with the team yet.

Trahan: Please expect my office and many others to follow up. Given what we know about Instagram’s impact on teen mental health, we’re all very concerned about our younger children.

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Trahan: This committee is ready to legislate to protect our children from your ambition. What we’re having a hard time reconciling is that while you’re publicly calling for regulation – which by the way comes off as incredibly decent and noble – you’re plotting your next frontier of growth which deviously targets our young children and which you all take great strides, with infinitely more resources, in protecting your own children.

This playbook is familiar, as some of my colleagues have already pointed out.  It’s the same tactic we saw from alcohol companies and big tobacco – start ‘em young and bank on them never leaving – or at least never being able to. But these are our children and their health and well-being deserve to take priority over your profits.

What They’re Saying:

Ylan Q. Mui, CNBC Senior Congressional Correspondent: Wow on this line of questioning from @RepLoriTrahan:

Trahan to Pichai: "What do you say when one of your kids doesn’t want to put your phone down?"

Pichai: The struggle is the same. I use parental controls.

Trahan: "The last thing overworked parents need is more complex to-dos, which is what parental controls are. They need child-centric design by default."

 Connects tech to alcohol and tobacco industries in targeting children.

Geoffrey Fowler, Washington Post Technology Columnist: .@RepLoriTrahan with some smart personal tech criticism:

The last thing overworked parents need right now – especially right now – are more complex to dos, which is what parental controls are. They need child-centric design by default.

Issie Lapowsky, Senior Reporter at Protocol: Super pointed line of questioning from Rep. Trahan on children. "While you're publicly calling for regulation which, by the way comes off as incredibly decent and noble, you're plotting your next frontier of growth, which deviously targets our young children."

Julia Boorstin, Senior Media and Entertainment Reporter at CNBC: Parental controls debated between @RepLoriTrahan (parent-to-parent) between the mother-of-5 lawmaker and @sundarpichai and Zuckerberg. Getting this parent-of-two thinking...

Bloomberg: Massachusetts Democrat Lori Trahan questioned the CEOs over what she called the companies’ “manipulative design features intended to keep them hooked,” such as the auto-play function on YouTube, which rolls a viewer directly into a new video when one ends. She questioned Zuckerberg over whether Facebook would enable “endless” scrolling and the ability to add filter effects on photos on the new Instagram app for kids. Zuckerberg said that Instagram Kids is still in early development, and the company is looking into safety measures as part of that process.

 “This committee is ready to legislate to protect our children from your ambition,” Trahan said. “What we’re having a hard time reconciling is while you’re publicly calling for regulation -- which comes off as incredibly completely decent and noble -- you’re plotting your next frontier of growth which deviously targets our young children.”

Social media services targeted at kids and teens have also caught the attention of the Federal Trade Commission, which has fined companies for violating children’s privacy laws. In 2019, YouTube agreed to pay a record $170 million fine for failing to obtain parental consent in collecting data on kids under the age of 13. The FTC has also spoken with Facebook after it was revealed a flaw allowed some kids to chat with people their parents hadn’t approved.

The Hill: Democratic Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) also spent her questioning focused on children’s issues, including asking whether YouTube Kids autoplays videos and if the Instagram for children service will let users scroll infinitely, suggesting some bipartisan appetite for legislation on such topics.

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