February 13, 2023 | less than a minute read

President Biden Urges Congress to Prioritize Children's Online Privacy and Focuses on Transparency

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Trisha Sircar

Partner and Co-Privacy Officer

Get in touch

Trisha Sircar

Partner and Co-Privacy Officer

At the State of the Union on February 7, President Biden reiterated the need to protect children online and address social media's mental health impact on children.

President Biden's comments largely his first State of the Union address in 2022, in which Biden said it was time to end “the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit.” However, ahead of this year's address, the White House released a fact sheet presenting a renewed case for protecting kids online and embracing regulations popularized in the United Kingdom.

President Biden called for bipartisan support to ban targeted advertising for children and young people online, and demanding transparency about tech companies’ algorithms and how they collect Americans’ personal data.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on protecting kids online next week. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) recently took over as chairman of the committee’s investigations panel, where he vowed to continue work on kids’ privacy.

“We must finally hold social media companies accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for profit,” said Biden. “And it’s time to pass bipartisan legislation to stop Big Tech from collecting personal data on kids and teenagers online, ban targeted advertising to children, and impose stricter limits on the personal data these companies collect on all of us.”