SPY Kids Act Bans Market Research on Kids Under 13, Requires Parental Consent for Teens Online

The Stop Profiling Youth and Kids Act, or the SPY Kids Act, is aiming to change how internet platforms interact with minors—specifically when it comes to gathering data for marketing. Essentially, this bill puts a hard stop on certain types of data collection, forcing platforms to treat kids and teens differently than adult users.

The New Rules of Research

If a "covered platform" knows a user is a child (under 13), that platform is completely banned from conducting market or product-focused research on them (Sec. 3). For teens (ages 13 through 16), that research isn't banned outright, but the platform must first get "verifiable parental consent" (Sec. 3). Think of this as requiring a digital permission slip for any company trying to figure out what content, ads, or products they should push to your teenager. This is a significant move because it targets the data gathering that fuels personalized marketing and content feeds.

Crucially, the bill defines a covered platform as an internet service that lets users create searchable profiles, facilitates user-generated content (text, video, etc.), uses design features to encourage engagement, and uses personal information for advertising or recommendations (Sec. 2). This definition is designed to hit social media apps, video-sharing sites, and similar interactive services, not necessarily every website on the internet.

What Counts as Encouraging Engagement?

This bill explicitly calls out the digital hooks that keep users glued to the screen. It defines a design feature as anything that encourages minors to use the platform more often, for longer, or more actively. This includes the usual suspects: infinite scrolling, auto-play functions, notifications, and rewards or badges for frequency (Sec. 2). It also specifically names "appearance altering filters" (Sec. 2). For platforms, this means they need to audit their entire user experience to ensure these features aren't being used to drive engagement from minors, especially if they are also conducting market research on them.

However, there’s an important carve-out: the bill does not restrict the processing of personal information used only to measure or report the performance, reach, or frequency of advertising or content (Sec. 3). This means platforms can still track how many people saw an ad or how often a video was played, which is essential for billing advertisers, but they can’t use that data to create new products or target new markets involving minors.

The Enforcement Hammer and the State Conflict

Enforcement for the SPY Kids Act falls primarily to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), treating violations like any other unfair or deceptive act under the FTC Act (Sec. 4). This gives the FTC the power to issue fines and seek remedies. In a move that empowers local action, State attorneys general can also sue on behalf of their residents if they feel the law has been violated, seeking damages or injunctions (Sec. 4).

But here’s where things get complicated for states: Section 6 contains a broad preemption clause. It states that no state or local government can create or enforce any law that deals with the same subject matter covered by this Act. If a state already has a strong law protecting teens from online profiling, this federal bill could potentially override it if a court decides the two laws cover the same ground. This means that while the SPY Kids Act offers new protections, it could also wipe out stronger, existing state-level rules, which is something to watch closely.

For parents, this bill offers a clearer boundary on data collection for children under 13. For the platforms, it means a significant compliance headache, especially around the "knows" standard—meaning they must have actual knowledge or act in "willful disregard" of a user's age (Sec. 2). For those of us juggling work and family, the takeaway is simple: the federal government is stepping in to regulate the digital marketing aimed at your kids, but it might be doing so at the expense of local control.