I myself am always suspicious of the "Think of the children!!!" crowd.

Regardless, I think you've missed the part where the FTC said what they were gathering information on, e.g. "how[social media] practices affect children and teens."

I didn't miss that part.

That's why I said that I don't trust people who say they are "thinking of the children". If you trust their intentions, well, we can peaceably agree to disagree.

I don't trust laws justified with only a soundbite though, whatever the soundbite is.

But your friends are likely not the politicians in charge, and even if they were, I wouldn't take the word of an anonymous internet poster that said friends were wholly honest and forthright in this regard. I would remain skeptical of their intentions. The recipe for good democracy includes a healthy amount of skepticism. Skepticism is what motivates investigations and inquiries. Inquiries of the type the FTC studiously avoided by not triggering the 10 entity flag.

Is LinkedIn targeting those users with its product? No.

Does LinkedIn have a business strategy surrounding those users? Probably not.

Is the way that LinkedIn interacts with these users going to be illustrative of larger industry trends? I doubt it.