Unite for Safe Social Media has been supportive of Ohio’s Social Media Parental Notification Act since it was introduced and passed last summer. It requires social media platform providers to get the approval of parents for kids under 16 to access the unfiltered content of these apps. NetChoice the Tech industry’s trade association, filed and was granted a temporary restraining order on January 9th. The law therefore will not go into effect on January. 15th. A real loss for Ohio families.
The Act gives parents the ability to be parents. Families can make decisions together about platform access before their kids are 16. Families need to ‘lean’ on this smart policy to ensure their kids experience social media in a safe and healthy manner. In the absence of any industry regulation nor interest in age-appropriate designs and content, the penultimate business goal is to keep our kids online for as long as possible. In just a few initial clicks, complete user data is ready to sell to advertisers. It is THE challenge of their parenting lifetimes. We urge the Court to provide parents the option to exercise their parental rights by taking the simple action of verifying an age requirement, per the law.
As it stands today, it is a very unfair fight – parents against the nation’s leading industry.
Unite for Safe Social Media is a non-profit collaboration of families across the country leveraging mutual support for healthy and productive online experiences.
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