A growing trend in state-level legislation is emerging as privacy concerns for children and teens become more pronounced. For decades, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) has been the solitary piece of federal law aimed at safeguarding the privacy of minors, specifically targeting data collected from children under the age of 13. Despite numerous bipartisan efforts to expand COPPA and other federal privacy laws for minors, progress at the national level remains stagnant.
In response to the lack of robust federal requirements, states have stepped forward to regulate data processing for minors, as well as the online platforms accessed by children and teens. This movement follows a historical pattern wherein states address the gaps left by absent federal privacy laws by introducing their own regulations—previously seen in areas like data breach notification and artificial intelligence.
Such state-level actions could create a complex compliance environment for businesses, with diverse interpretations and enforcement by regulators leading to potential challenges. For further details, the complete discussion is available in the original article by Kandi Parsons, Jon Frankel, and Rushil Mehta, at Law.com.