No One Under 13 Admitted, but Who Told Them to Lie?
Teen Chat Network, which bills itself as a cool place for kids, warns children under 13 that they are no longer allowed to participate in its chat rooms--even the one formerly called “Preteens.”
But with a simple click of the mouse, any 10-year-old can enter a fake birth date and--presto!--gain access to the Web site’s renamed “Younger Community” chat room, which recently included participants such as “hotsexycheerleader” and “hornybigboy.”
Now federal regulators and children’s watchdog organizations are starting to scrutinize these hormone-driven teen sites--not because they are exposing children to racy material but because they might violate federal privacy-protection rules.
The 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act requires commercial Web sites aimed at kids younger than 13 to obtain parental permission before collecting or selling personal information about kids. It also applies to e-mail and chat rooms because of the risk that children might reveal too much about themselves.
The Web sites realize that asking Mom and Dad for permission is strictly uncool with kids, and the costs of collecting parental-consent forms can add $200,000 to their annual expenses. So some youth-oriented dot-coms, including Teen Chat Network, argue they do not fall under the privacy act because they do not target children under 13.
Critics say such teen sites simply want to avoid the hassles and costs of complying with the rules, which took effect last April. They say that placing a statement on a Web site warning kids younger than 13 to go away is not enough to exempt teen sites from the law.
“We think there are some kid sites out there that, since the law took effect, have decided that now they’re teen sites,” said C. Lee Peeler, associate director at the Federal Trade Commission, which is investigating several cases and expects to bring enforcement actions as early as next month. “We are concerned about teen sites whose compliance strategy seems to be to tell kids that they should [falsely] register as over age 13.”
The FTC earlier this month named the Children’s Advertising Review Unit, an arm of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, as the first self-regulatory organization to help enforce the law.
“You can’t just say to a kid: ‘You must be 13 or older to enter. Now . . . how old are you?’ ” said Elizabeth Lascoutx, the unit’s director. “There has to be some kind of effective age screening.”
Her watchdog group has pressured nearly a dozen companies--including Walt Disney, Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen and the Britney Spears-backed Sweet16.com--to improve their sites’ age-verification and parental-consent practices. It has reported several others--including Teen Chat Network, Lisa Frank Inc. and WiredReality.com--to the FTC for alleged violations.
As recently as last fall, Lascoutx said, Teen Chat Network offered chat rooms titled “Preteen” and “12 and younger” but made no effort to obtain the required parental consent.
After the Children’s Advertising Review Unit complained, the site renamed the rooms “Younger Community,” which it now says targets the 13-15 age group.
Officials at Teen Chat Network, based in Roswell, N.M., could not be reached by telephone and did not respond to an e-mail request for an interview.
According to the company’s Web site, “Anyone under the ages of 13 years are not permitted to use any of our services, whether it be our chat rooms, message boards, email, or anything else. We do not target our Web sites towards children and we do not plan to in the future.”
Such warnings might not be enough. The FTC has sent hundreds of warning letters to Web sites it believes might not be complying with privacy rules.
Among other things, the FTC wants Web sites to use “neutral” age-verification methods that will not tempt children to lie. Officials also encourage the use of technological devices to prevent kids from altering information once it is put in.
Walt Disney, for example, started using “session cookies” during the registration process to prevent children from clicking the back button and entering a higher age. The cookie, a tiny file placed on the computer, records and remembers the child’s first response. It expires after the user signs off.
Peeler would not identify any of the Web sites under investigation, but he said teen-oriented chat rooms remained a chief concern because of the risk that children younger than 13 might reveal personal information about themselves, such as their names or addresses.
Lisa Frank, which caters to girls, decided against trying to outsmart kids with age-verification tricks and now requires parental consent for all chat-room participants, regardless of age, said Rhonda Rowlette, executive vice president of the company.
Some say it is unfair to crack down on teen sites or require them to comply with costly regulations, saying such steps could backfire by forcing kids to turn instead to adult chat rooms and e-mail services, where children are far more vulnerable.
“We’re just sweeping the problem under the rug,” said Steve Bryan, president of Zeeks.com, a once-popular Web site for kids that is closing. “Because I targeted kids and went to great pains to create a kid-safe place, I had to get parental approval. But Yahoo or Hotmail doesn’t. They can just let kids lie.”
The demise of Zeeks.com and numerous other kids-only sites may be part of the reason that teen sites today are more popular with the under-13 market. In the last year, 15 of the top 25 kids’ Web sites have failed, closed or dramatically scaled back operations, according to Parry Aftab, a children’s privacy attorney in New York who advises Web sites on compliance with the 1998 law.
“There’s no stand-alone business model for kids,” Aftab said. “Kids do a lot of surfing, but not a lot of buying, so advertisers aren’t as interested in reaching them.”
The teen market isn’t doing much better. “Teens have some discretionary income, but not a huge amount,” said Claudine Singer, research director at Jupiter Media Metrix. “It’s not easy to make money from the teen model.”
The costs associated with the privacy act increase the financial hurdles for youth-oriented dot-coms. Because the regulations do not allow operators to get parental consent via e-mail, which is considered too unreliable, companies must collect written forms or set up toll-free hotlines, costing between $100,000 and $200,000 a year.
“That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Bryan said, adding that he could have afforded such costs if advertising revenue hadn’t evaporated.
The largest, most popular kids’ Web sites, such as Disney.com and Nick.com, have supported tighter privacy rules, though they also have deeper pockets to absorb the costs. Some smaller sites found they were able to comply with the law and avoid added costs by simply not collecting any personal information from kids and not offering interactive services in which kids might reveal too much about themselves, such as chat or e-mail.
Kathryn Montgomery, president of the Center for Media Education, said failed dot-coms are using the privacy act as a scapegoat for bad business. Her group’s 1996 report, “Web of Deception”--which chronicled how Web sites were gathering and selling information about kids online without their parents’ knowledge--helped to make the act the first move by Congress in tackling the issue of online privacy.
Montgomery said she originally advocated including teens in the law’s protections but was later persuaded that teens should be treated differently. Now she feels it might be time for Congress to approve privacy protections for teens and adults.
“We never believed we should stop at kids,” Montgomery said. “Everyone is entitled to privacy protection.”
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Times staff writer Edmund Sanders covers AOL Time Warner and technology policy in Washington.
