The Center for Digital Democracy, filed a complaint and request for investigation with the FTC on October 19 related to the marketing of Doritos to adolescents. The complaint cites a research report, Digital Food Marketing to Children & Adolescents. The report reviews digital marketing practices that purportedly pose threats to the health of children. The FTC will have a lot on its plate.
This appears to be in the FTC’s area of concentration, given a settlement it reached in early November with something called skidekids.com, a social networking website that advertises itself as the “Facebook and Myspace for Kids”. Quoting from the FTC announcement:
The operator of http://www.skidekids.com…; agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that he collected personally information from approximately 5,600 children without obtaining prior parental consent, in violation of the Commission’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) Rule.
