April 9th, 2015
Talking Barbie
By: Rugeradh Tungsupakul
According to the recent toy fair in New York City, Mattel, the manufacturer of Barbie dolls, had introduced “Hello Barbie”, a new version of its famous Barbie dolls that can listen and talk back to children.
Basically, Hello Barbie will be functioned by speech recognition and Wi-Fi connection. Whatever your children say to Hello Barbie will be recorded and saved in the cloud. In this way, Barbie is collecting a lot of information about your children and responses to them based on those saved information.
Please follow this link for more information: http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/11/news/companies/creepy-hello-barbie/
In my opinion, Hello Barbie may, at least, encounter the following controversies:
- Parents cannot control what will be recorded and transmitted to the cloud. For instance, children may intentionally or accidentally push a record button anytime. This means any voices or conversation within the house will leak out to the outside world.
- Responses from Barbie are out of the parents’ control. Even it is claimed that Barbie’s responses will be based on information recorded and saved in the cloud, this is not a guarantee that its responses to children will be relevant, appropriate and harmless to either children or parents.
With regard to issue (ii), though Mattel may claim its entitlement to the First Amendment Right, the parents should have the right to select what kind of information should be allowed in their house as well as what kind of message their children can consume. Assuming that children play with their Barbie at home, parents should have the right of a householder to bar any unwanted message sent into their house. (Rowan v. United States Post Office Department)
Another possible argument of Mattel may be that the responses from Barbie are non-commercial speech so it should not subject to a lesser protection as a commercial speech is. Therefore, Hello Barbie’s function should be fine as long as it complies with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act[1].
In my personal point of view, messages from Barbie may either be ‘commercial’ or ‘non-commercial’. Due to the lack of detailed information of Hello Barbie, I would like to make a comparison in the following situations:
Scenario 1[2]:
Children: “What should I be when I grow up?”
Barbie: “Well, you told me you like being on stage, so maybe a dancer?”
Scenario 2:
Children: “I feel so lonely, what should I do?”
Barbie: “You are not alone. At least, you have me or you may ask your parents to buy more talking friends!”
Obviously, the answer from Barbie in Scenario 2 should be considered as a commercial speech because it proposes a commercial transaction and relates solely to the economic interests of the speaker and its audience. This might be a big task for Mattel to escape from the stricter scrutiny.
Further, it is interesting to think whether the government would be authorized to regulate the use of Hello Barbie in addition to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Based on a three-part test of Central Hudson, assuming that the commercial speech is not misleading and relates to lawful activities, it is highly likely that the government can assert protection of both parents and children as a substantial interest to be achieved by the regulation. Children, by nature, can easily be convinced and may be used as a part of hardcore marketing trick. Parents, if cannot control the content of messages sent to their children, may financially suffer because of their children’s deceived demand.
In addition, the regulation must be directly advanced the government interest and narrowly tailored not to restrict more speech than necessary in order to survive Central Hudson. However, these two prongs should be better to discuss after more details of Hello Barbie are available in the marketplace.
Since there is a high possibility that more and more controversies may arise after Hello Barbie hits the store this fall, it is very interesting to keep an eye on how the government and the society will react to this new coming doll.
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[1] This is a claim from Mattel’s spokeswoman.
[2] This is a real example from the toy fair.