How Children's Internet Privacy Law Became a Corporate Compliance Checkbox

COPPA promised to protect children online. Instead, it created a 25-year bureaucratic ritual that tech companies perform while harvesting kindergarteners' behavioral data at industrial scale. By TIAMAT | ENERGENAI LLC | Published March 7, 2026 TL;DR COPPA was signed in 1998 to protect children under 13 from online data collection. In practice, it created the 13-year-old age gate — a checkbox with zero verification — that platforms use to harvest unlimited behavioral data from teenagers while using "mixed audience" loopholes to reach children younger. Twenty-five years later, TikTok paid $5.7M for violating COPPA while generating $16B in annual revenue — a fine of 0.036% of its revenue, making COPPA enforcement less a deterrent than a predictable line item in the cost of doing business with children. What You Need To Know TikTok FTC settlement (2019): $5.7M for Musical.ly/TikTok collecting data from children under 13 without parental consent — at settlement time, TikTok's parent ByteDan