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The Federal Trade Commission plans to rent a minimum of one child psychologist who can guide its work on web regulation, Democratic Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya told The Record in an interview published Monday.
FTC Chair Lina Khan backs the plan, Bedoya told the outlet, adding that he hopes it will probably turn into a reality by next fall, though the commission doesn’t yet have a firm timeline.
“Our plan is to rent a number of child psychologists to assist us assess the mental health impacts of what children and young people do online,” FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar told CNBC in a press release. “We’re currently exploring next steps including what number of to rent and when.”
The FTC’s plan is indicative of a broader push across the U.S. government, specializing in online protections for youths and youths. Federal and state lawmakers have proposed recent laws they imagine will make the web safer by mandating stronger age authentication or placing more responsibility on tech firms to design protected products for young users. The U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory in May that young people’s social media use poses significant mental health risks.
Bedoya, who founded the Center on Privacy and Technology on the Georgetown University Law Center, said the plan is reflective of the FTC’s approach as “an authority agency through and thru.” It follows the agency’s earlier decisions so as to add economists to its ranks of lawyers on staff and, later, technologists.
Bedoya told The Record that it’s “absolutely a part of that tradition of systematically expanding our expertise.”
Bedoya envisions an in-house child psychologist to be a helpful resource for commissioners like himself.
“If I even have an economic query, I’ve got 80 Ph.D. economists I can ask,” he told The Record. “If someone is making an allegation about mental health harms, I haven’t any full-time staff who’re experts within the psychology of it.”
While Bedoya said the FTC can already get advice from ad hoc consultants, hiring a baby psychologist on staff “can send a powerful signal to other law enforcement agencies within the U.S. by saying we want to have these folks in-house such that it is a standing capability.”
Those experts could bring vital insights that may link a cause to an alleged harm and inform the suitable damages the agency seeks, Bedoya said. He added that child psychologists could help the FTC evaluate allegations of how social media may affect mental health, in addition to assess the effect of dark patterns or other deceptive features.
Bedoya said the initial hires would likely be “psychological scientists” or “social psychologists,” who conduct research somewhat than evaluate kids in a clinical setting. While he said he cannot “presuppose anything,” they’d likely work on investigations, strategy and possibly rulemaking.
Read the complete interview at The Record.
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