About this episode

The episode discusses the implications of Ohio's Social Media Parental Notification Act and its legal challenges.

Ohio lawmakers made it very clear they wanted to protect children from online harms back in 2023, when they passed a law mandating that minors under the age of 16 could not use social media unless they obtained parental consent. But just one month after the new law went into effect in 2024; a big tech advocacy group called NetChoice went to federal court and obtained a preliminary injunction keeping the law from going into effect, because, they argued; it violated children’s First Amendment right to free speech, guaranteed by the US Constitution. Then, in 2025, a federal judge made that preliminary injunction permanent, barring it from going into effect–until now. That’s because the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this month that NetChoice not only had no legal standing in the case, but also, that the companies they were representing were actually harming the children whose free speech they were purportedly trying to protect. But will this new law actually do anything to really protect children from online threats associated with social media including cyberbullying, sexual predators, anxiety, depression, self-harm, and more? To find out, and to explore some of complex…

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