On Wednesday, April 16, 2025, an Ohio federal judge struck down the state of Ohio's Social Media Parental Notification Act. This law requires parental consent for children under the age of 16 to access various social media platforms. While the ruling has been praised as a victory for free speech by tech industry advocates, it has also brought on fears about the growing dangers of online child exploitation. This reignited a national debate over protecting young social media users in the digital age without infringing on their constitutional rights. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed the law in July 2023 as part of the state's annual budget, and the Social Media Parental Notification Act was set to take effect on January 15, 2024. The law mandated that social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat obtain parental consent before allowing users under 16 to create accounts. Ohio Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted, a strong supporter of the legislation, emphasized the addictive nature that these platforms can have on children. Social media can cause potential harm to the mental health of children, including contributing factors such as depression, anxiety, and exposure to inappropriate content and online predators.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost also defended the law, highlighting its role in protecting minors from a wide range of online dangers. "This law aims to give parents more control over their children creating new social media accounts," Yost stated in a December 2023 press release. He specifically called out the risks of mental health crises, such as suicide-related behaviors, and the growing threat of online child exploitation, which includes grooming and sexual predation, as key issues for why the law is necessary.
The alarming statistics regarding online child exploitation underscore the concerns raised by Attorney General Yost. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), the CyberTipline received over 36 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation in just 2023. This resulted in a 20% increase over the past three years. More troubling is the number of urgent, time-sensitive reports where a child is at immediate risk of harm by a predator has surged by 140% over the same period. These reports often involve child sexual abuse material (CSAM), online grooming, and other forms of exploitation facilitated by online predators on various social media platforms.
The Child Crime Prevention & Safety Center notes that there are an estimated 500,000 online predators active each day, which puts children aged 12 to 15 at a high risk for online exploitation. The FBI reports that over 50% of victims of online sexual exploitation fall within this age group. Predators often frequent social media sites popular with young users, such as Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat. They will create fake personas to build trust with children; this is a process known as grooming. This can lead to devastating and harmful outcomes, including real-life encounters, sextortion, or the production of CSAM. NCMEC highlighted the role of generative AI in exacerbating these risks, with 4,700 reports of CSAM or sexually exploitative content linked to AI in 2023, 70% of which originated from traditional online social media platforms.
PubMed published an article that further illustrates the scope of the problem, noting that the ease of fabricating an online persona on social media makes children accessible to predators, increasing their risk of exploitation. Groomers often instruct children to keep their interactions secret. Still, signs of grooming may include increased time spent online, secretive behavior, sudden screen-switching when a parent approaches, using sexual language inappropriate for their age, or becoming emotionally volatile. UNICEF has also emphasized the global scale of this issue, working in over 20 countries to combat online child sexual exploitation through coordinated national responses and evidence-based prevention programs such as the ones America's Future coordinates to help bring awareness and teach prevention.
Beyond exploitation, children face other online dangers that compound these risks. A Pew Research Center survey published on April 22, 2025, found that parents are increasingly worried about the impact social media has on the mental health of children, linking it to rising rates of anxiety and depression among children. Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has called social media a major contributor to a national mental health crisis among teens and young adults. An April of 2025 research from Johns Hopkins Medicine highlights how excessive social media use before bed disrupts sleep, which is a contributier to mental health issues, while Nemours KidsHealth notes that cyberbullying which often involves harsh and humiliating comments and posts can lead to anxiety, depression, and even suicide among tweens, teens, and young adults.
The Center for Cyber Safety and Education reports that 40% of children have interacted with strangers online, with 53% sharing their phone number, 15% attempting to meet strangers in person, and 6% revealing their home address. Additionally, 58% of tweens and 75% of teens have encountered nudity or explicit sexual content online. In comparison, 33% of tweens and 57% of teens have been involved in self-harm or suicidal situations specifically linked to online interactions. These statistics underscore the desperate need for protective measures, as time spent on social media often replaces health-related activities such as physical exercise, further damaging mental health through social comparisons and exposure to harmful and dangerous content online.
Despite these risks, the Social Media Parental Notification Act faced immediate opposition from NetChoice, a tech industry group representing companies like Meta, X Corp., TikTok, Snapchat, and Google. On January 5, 2024, NetChoice filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, arguing that the law violated the 1st and 14th Amendment protections by restricting minors' access to online freedom of speech. The group claimed that the law's requirement for users to provide personal data to access social media was overly broad and infringed on free speech and expression.
Chris Marchese, director of NetChoice's litigation center, stated, "We at NetChoice believe families equipped with educational resources are capable of determining the best approach to online services and privacy protections for themselves." NetChoice also pointed to existing platform tools, such as parental supervision features, as sufficient for addressing child safety concerns among parents.
On February 12, 2024, Chief U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley granted a preliminary injunction to block the law. The decision he made was permanent on April 17, 2025. Judge Marbley ruled that the law failed to meet the strict scrutiny standard for content-based speech restrictions. He noted that the state of Ohio's evidence linking social media to harm was largely correlational rather than causal, and insufficient to justify the law's broad scope.
Ohio's legal battle is only a part of a broader wave of state-level efforts to regulate children's social media use due to the growing concerns about online dangers, including exploitation. States like Utah and Arkansas have passed similar laws requiring parental consent for those under 16, only to face legal challenges from NetChoice and other groups. In 2023, NetChoice successfully blocked a parental consent law in Arkansas and a children's digital privacy law in California, citing constitutional concerns once again, such as freedom of speech.
Judge Marbley's ruling in Ohio aligns with these precedents, highlighting states' challenges in crafting regulations that withstand constitutional scrutiny. In response, Attorney General Yost called on the U.S House of Congress to act at the federal level, stating, "If states can't protect kids from the dangers of social media, including the very real threat of online exploitation, then the federal government must step in to create a uniform standard."
The debate over social media regulation is far from resolved. While NetChoice celebrates the ruling as a victory for free speech, advocates for stricter regulations argue that the documented dangers of online child exploitation, alongside mental health risks and exposure to predators, demand stronger protections. NCMEC, UNICEF, and other organizations continue to push for global and national strategies to combat these threats, emphasizing the need for education, prevention, and coordinated responses to protect children online.
For now, Ohio's children under 16 can access social media without parental consent. Still, the ruling has left many parents, lawmakers, and tech companies grappling with a serious question: How can we ensure a safe digital environment for the next generation without compromising their freedoms?
