Last week, Cheddar interviewed Dona Fraser, Director of the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU), on the rise of kid influencers, or children influencers. The discussion focused on the explosion of child content creators and the lack of guidance that technology companies and platforms face in this area. While the rules for traditional advertising to children are clear, “technology has moved far past the law. The law is trying to catch up to it. . . There are very [few] rules, [and] very little guidance,” Fraser says. Self-regulation can be effective, however, if the platforms and kid influencers contribute to the conversation for the development of guidelines.
“I think [the tech companies] can self-regulate, we just need to have all—the entire ecosystem needs to come to the table on this one. You’ve got to have the platforms, [] the companies who are creating the content, [and] the kid influencers, because I don’t think every entity understands what the touchpoints are of the other entities. So we need to get everybody in a room. CARU would love to be able to spearhead that. And, at some point have the conversation with regulators: ‘look, this is what we came up with.’ Let’s come up with some really good guidelines that work for the industry.”