Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Restores Ohio Parental Consent Law for Social Media Use by Minors

A divided panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in June 2026 that Ohio's law requiring children under 16 to obtain parental consent before using social media apps must be restored, reversing a lower court block and delivering a defeat to NetChoice, the trade group representing TikTok, Snapchat, Meta and other major technology companies. The Cincinnati-based court found in a 2-1 decision that the law was not unconstitutional and sent the case back to a lower court to vacate the enforcement block. NetChoice had argued that the measure was overly broad, vague and represented an unconstitutional impediment to free speech, but the Sixth Circuit disagreed, with Judge Eric Clay writing that the statute imposes a parental consent requirement. The law requires companies to obtain parental permission for social media and gaming applications and to provide privacy guidelines so families understand what content would be censored or moderated on a child's profile.

Parental-consent mandates require platforms to implement age-verification systems that collect personal data from every user, including adults, raising privacy concerns and compliance costs, yet they do not address the underlying risk of contact-initiated abuse or exploitation once an account is active. Where a measure restricts access for compliant users but displaces offenders and predatory behaviour to less-regulated platforms or unmonitored direct-message channels, the structural limits of a blanket restriction become apparent. Guardii's detection architecture intercepts grooming, sextortion, coercion and age-inappropriate contact in real time by analysing conversation patterns across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, flagging hostile or predatory behaviour at the point of contact and surfacing the child to a parent or safeguarding authority without requiring every user to prove their age or identity. The system addresses the specific harm without the trade-offs inherent in restricting access, detecting the threat as it emerges rather than relying on compliance alone to prevent it.