Josh Golin
Parent Advocates · Fairplay, Screen Time Action Network, ParentsSOS
Leads Fairplay and its Screen Time Action Network, a leading campaign organization behind the push for the Kids Online Safety Act.
Josh Golin is executive director of Fairplay, an organization that advocates for children against harmful marketing and manipulative design in digital media. He coordinates Fairplay's Screen Time Action Network, a coalition of groups working on children's screen-time issues, and partners with ParentsSOS, a network of families affected by online harms. Golin has been a visible campaigner for the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), pushing for legislation that would require platforms to build in stronger safety defaults for young users. His work spans coalition-building, public advocacy, and direct engagement with lawmakers on children's digital-safety policy.
WORKS IN THE LIBRARY (10)
TESTIMONY
Written Testimony Before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hearing on "Protecting Our Children Online"
On February 14, 2023, Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, submitted written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on protecting children online. He told the committee that platform design choices — engagement-maximizing algorithms and largely unregulated data collection — are associated with a range of harms to children and teens, naming compulsive overuse, exposure to age-inappropriate content, cyberbullying, and mental-health strain among the problems he linked to the current business model. Golin argued voluntary industry self-regulation has not been sufficient and urged Congress to pass comprehensive legislation, including the Kids Online Safety Act and an updated children's privacy law, requiring safety-by-design standards. He cited Fairplay's own advocacy record — a 2018 FTC complaint against Google's YouTube and the 2021 campaign that led Meta to pause a planned Instagram product for children — as evidence that sustained outside pressure, not company goodwill, drives change.
Written Testimony Before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce, Hearing on "Holding Big Tech Accountable: Legislation to Build a Safer Internet"
On December 9, 2021, Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, testified before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on legislation to build a safer internet for children. Testifying weeks after former Facebook employee Frances Haugen's disclosures about Instagram, Golin argued the problems she surfaced were not unique to one company: he described compulsive overuse, exposure to harmful content, cyberbullying, mental-health strain, and child sexual exploitation as industry-wide issues linked to platform design rather than isolated incidents. He urged the subcommittee to advance two specific bills — the Kids Internet Design and Safety (KIDS) Act and a children's and teens' online privacy protection update — arguing that together they would curb manipulative design features and restrict the collection and monetized use of young people's data. TechKids Foundation includes this testimony as a documented instance of advocacy directly tied to pending federal legislation, not as an independent research finding.
STUDIES
Senators Urge FTC to Investigate YouTube and Google Over Alleged COPPA Violations
This August 2023 CyberScoop article covers a push by Senators Ed Markey and Marsha Blackburn for the FTC to investigate Google and YouTube over new findings — from ad-tech research firm Adalytics — that ads for adult-oriented products were appearing on videos marked "made for kids," a pattern the senators said suggested continued data collection on users under 13 despite Google's 2019 COPPA settlement. Fairplay executive director Josh Golin is quoted calling for an immediate, comprehensive FTC investigation and, if the report's findings are confirmed, penalties reflecting what he characterizes as Google's status as a repeat violator of children's privacy law. TechKids Foundation includes this piece as a documented example of ongoing advocacy pressure on regulators regarding platform compliance with children's-privacy rules, not as an independent verification of Adalytics' findings.
Advocates Who Filed the Privacy Complaint Against Google/YouTube Laud Improvements, But Say FTC Settlement Falls Far Short
This September 2019 statement from Fairplay and the Center for Digital Democracy responds to the FTC's settlement with Google over YouTube's alleged violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) — an enforcement action that traced back to a complaint the two groups had filed. Executive director Josh Golin, quoted in the statement, welcomes the FTC's decision to act after years of alleged noncompliance but argues the $170 million penalty was too small relative to Google's revenue from child-directed content, and objects to a settlement structure that shifted much of the compliance burden onto individual video creators rather than Google itself. The statement calls for stronger ongoing FTC enforcement and for Congress to update federal children's privacy law. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented instance of advocacy shaping — and then publicly critiquing — a major children's-privacy regulatory outcome.
Advocates Called for Investigation of Amazon's Echo Dot Kids Edition, Federal Regulators Now Poised to Act
This March 2023 Fairplay statement describes federal regulators moving toward enforcement action against Amazon over its Echo Dot Kids Edition, following a 2019 complaint Fairplay and the Center for Digital Democracy had filed alleging Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) violations. The original complaint alleged Amazon indefinitely retained children's voice recordings even after parents requested deletion, provided inadequate privacy notices, and lacked sufficient parental-consent procedures. Executive director Josh Golin, quoted in the statement, welcomes the FTC and Department of Justice's apparent move toward action, framing it as the first federal enforcement matter targeting a voice-enabled device maker over children's-privacy compliance. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented instance of advocacy against a smart-home device marketed to children, presented as a regulatory and privacy matter rather than a claim about any specific harm to an individual child.
Advocates File FTC Complaint Against Google's YouTube Kids
This April 2015 press release announces an FTC complaint filed by a coalition of child- and consumer-advocacy groups, including the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC, later renamed Fairplay), against Google's newly launched YouTube Kids app. The complaint alleges the app's design — intermixing advertising with content, running program-length branded segments for toy and fast-food brands, and not disclosing paid promotional relationships within creator videos — used techniques the groups linked to exploiting young children's limited ability to distinguish ads from programming, contrary to longstanding broadcast-advertising safeguards. Josh Golin, then CCFC's associate director, is quoted arguing the app blurs advertising and programming in ways aimed at young viewers. TechKids Foundation includes this as an early, formative instance of Golin's regulatory advocacy on children's media, years before the same core allegations resurfaced in the 2019 FTC-Google COPPA settlement.
Fairplay FTC Complaint Reverberates in $10 Million Settlement with Disney
This September 2025 Fairplay statement covers an FTC settlement requiring Disney to pay $10 million for allegedly mislabeling child-directed YouTube videos as general-audience content, a violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Fairplay frames the case as a direct outgrowth of its own 2018 complaint against Google's YouTube, which produced the 2019 COPPA settlement that first required video creators to self-designate child-directed content — a labeling system Fairplay had warned created a financial incentive for creators to mislabel their videos and evade the rule. Executive director Josh Golin is quoted describing the Disney enforcement action as an important signal that content creators, not just platforms, must follow children's-privacy rules. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented, years-later policy and legal outcome directly traceable to advocacy Golin's organization initiated in 2018.
Facebook Unveils New Controls for Kids Using Its Platforms
This October 2021 PBS NewsHour piece reports on new safety features Facebook (now Meta) announced for young users, shortly after whistleblower Frances Haugen's congressional testimony about internal research on Instagram's associations with teen wellbeing. The features included prompts encouraging teens to take breaks and alerts after repeated viewing of certain content types, plus optional parental-supervision tools. Fairplay executive director Josh Golin, quoted in the piece, said there was "tremendous reason to be skeptical," noting that teens often maintain secret accounts to evade parental oversight and questioning whether the company would follow through on implementation. He called instead for regulatory limits on algorithmic amplification and reiterated his call for Meta to permanently cancel the paused Instagram-for-kids product. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented example of advocacy pressure-testing a platform's voluntary safety response.
Facebook Puts Instagram for Kids on Hold After Pushback
This September 2021 PBS NewsHour piece reports that Facebook (now Meta) paused development of a planned Instagram product for children under 13, following a Wall Street Journal investigation that described internal Facebook research associating heavy Instagram use with body-image and mood concerns among some teen girls, and after a bipartisan group of 44 state attorneys general urged the company to abandon the project over cyberbullying and child-safety concerns. Fairplay executive director Josh Golin, who had coordinated a large coalition of parents, advocates, and child-development experts opposing the product, is quoted urging Facebook to use the pause to genuinely consult independent child-development experts rather than treat it as a public-relations gesture. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented policy outcome — a company decision to shelve a product — that Golin's coalition-led advocacy is directly credited with helping bring about.