COLUMBUS, Ohio (Legal Newsline) - Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost is pointing at addiction statistics as he tries to hold together a state law targeting youth usage of social media websites.
Meanwhile, the trade association NetChoice is asserting First Amendment concerns already well-received by the federal choice hearing its challenge to the Parental Notification by Social Media Operators Act.
The two sides filed dueling motions for summary judgment on May 3 to Judge Algenon Marbley, who earlier this year blocked the law from taking effect with a preliminary injunction.
"Foreclosing minors under 16 from accessing all content on websites that the Act purports to cover, absent affirmative parental consent, is a breathtakingly blunt instrument for reducing social media's harm to children," Judge Marbley wrote then.
But Yost says the act, which requires those under 16 years old to submit parental approval to social media companies before they can create accounts, is needed.
"With a dwindling pool of potential new users, how is a social-media megacorporation supposed to generate continued growth?" attorneys for his office asked in their motion.
"The obvious answer to this problem is that these companies must capture a larger share of their billions of users' time and attention. This incentivizes them, now more than ever, to make their services addicted."
He cites a study that found 25% of eighth- and 10th-graders spent more than five hours a day on social media.
"(A)dolescent users are then 'constantly online' in virtual spaces whose features and functions encourage behavioral dysregulation, facilitate sexual abuse, and cause myriad issues that - while studied extensively - are not yet fully understood," Yost's motion said.
"With a one-sided contract in hand that helps foreclose any hope of redress, covered operators have little incentive to mitigate these risks."
Those aren't the only risks in play here, NetChoice argues. A state being able to chill free speech qualifies too.
"Covered websites - including NetChoice members' websites - disseminate a broad range of protected speech to minors covered by the Act," the group wrote.
"The Act imposes an unjustified restriction on minors' access to that speech. At the same time, the Act imposes a large - often crippling - burden on websites' ability to disseminate speech."
Marbley's February support for NetChoice's argument likened Ohio's law to one in California that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. That law kept minors from buying violent video games.
"Such laws do not enforce parental authority over children's speech and religion: they impose governmental authority, subject only to a parental veto," the Supreme Court ruled.
Marbley wrote: "The Act appears to be exactly that sort of law."