Webinars

Ohio’s trailblazing Social Media Parental Notification Act will require social media platforms to get parental consent for students 15 and under to create an account when it goes into effect. This marks a big change in how our students will be able to connect online and emphasizes states’ commitment to tackling social media and tech challenges seriously.

According to The Social Institute’s most recent data, most students are getting their first social media accounts at age 12. And with how tech-savvy students are, if they have a will, they will find a way to use their favorite apps. So what does this new law mean for students and educators?

Watch this on-demand webinar featuring Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist, Elon University Assistant Professor of Journalism, and attorney Israel Balderas. With his expertise in Media Law and Ethics, Israel Balderas joins us in an engaging and insightful conversation to:

• Uncover the potential legal challenges and implications for students, schools, and social media platforms.
• Examine the challenges and opportunities presented by the act in fostering a safer and more informed online world.
• Discover the crucial role educators play in navigating and adapting to legislative changes around social media and technology.

Featured Presenter

Israel Balderas is an Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist-turned-journalism educator. He’s also an attorney who has provided pro bono support focused on First Amendment protection for newsgathering. As a tenure-track assistant professor of journalism, who predominately teaches Media Law and Ethics, his teaching and research agenda focuses on government regulation of expression and newsgathering. Balderas serves on the board of Solutions Journalism Network. Its mission is to help journalists around the world to investigate and explain, in a critical and clear-eyed way, how people try to solve widely shared problems. While journalists usually define news as “what’s gone wrong,” solutions journalism tries to expand that definition: Responses to problems are also newsworthy. By adding rigorous coverage of solutions, journalists can tell the whole story. As a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, Balderas most recently served as a national board member, elected by the membership as treasurer. Most recently, he guided the organization through a $1 million deficit. Balderas also served as committee chair of the SPJ Legal Defense Fund, responsible for supervising court filings related to protecting the free practice of journalism, as well as directing funds allocated to providing journalists with legal or direct financial assistance entangled in litigation.  His pro bono work has included representing migrant children separated from parents at the U.S.-Mexican border and helping nonprofits during the COVID-19 crisis apply for financial aid through the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program.

Prior to teaching, Balderas worked as a news anchor and investigative reporter at local TV stations in Florida, North Carolina and Texas. He’s also worked as a show producer for various FOX News Channel programming, including Special Report with Brit Hume and FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace. As a broadcast journalist, Balderas has been nominated for three Emmy® awards (one as part of a TV station nomination) — winning one for Best Continuing Coverage within 24 hours. He’s also won multiple Florida Associated Press Broadcasters Awards and was named best TV news anchor by the Radio Television Digital News Association of the Carolinas. As a journalism professor, Balderas also won an Emmy®, Telly, Ava Digital and Communicators awards for producing a news documentary on the plight of Syrian refugees titled “Four Families in Mafraq.” The experiential learning student project involved students majoring in journalism, film and intracultural studies who traveled to Northern Jordan to interview families fleeing their country’s civil war.A graduate of The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law, Balderas clerked as a law student for the Honorable Judge Royce C. Lamberth for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He’s also worked at the Federal Communications Commission as a media advisor in the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau