Inaugural Fritz Digital Ethics Forum: “Social Media, Children, and the Constitution” explores how to protect children while protecting freedom of expression and privacy [video recording]

The Fritz Digital Ethics Forum at Georgetown University’s Center for Digital Ethics brings leading scholars and practitioners together to address urgent ethical questions in existing and emerging technologies. This first event examined the serious problems posed by children’s use of social media and the constitutional questions raised by efforts to regulate it. As states pass age-verification, parental-consent, and design laws — and courts test them against the First Amendment and privacy protections — a panel consisting of Laura Marquez-Garrett (Social Media Victims Law Center), Ryan Newman (Chief Deputy Attorney General for the State of Florida), Neil Richards (Washington University School of Law), and Ed Whelan (Ethics and Public Policy Center) mapped the challenges ahead and the paths forward. The panel was framed by plenary remarks from best-selling author and Georgetown computer scientist Cal Newport and was moderated by Meg Leta Jones, professor and chair of the Communication, Culture, and Technology program at Georgetown University. Newport and Jones are founding faculty members at the Center for Digital Ethics.

Speaker Biographies:

Ed Whelan
Distinguished Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center (Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies)
Ed Whelan is a leading commentator on constitutional law and the courts. A former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and former Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, he writes and speaks extensively on the Constitution, the judiciary, and legal policy.

Neil Richards
Koch Distinguished Professor in Law and Co-Director of the Cordell Institute, Washington University in St. Louis
Neil Richards is one of the world’s leading experts in privacy law, free expression, and the regulation of data and emerging technologies. He is the author of Why Privacy Matters (2021) and Intellectual Privacy (2015), and writes on how the law should govern technologies built on human information.

Laura Marquez-Garrett
Attorney, Social Media Victims Law Center
Laura Marquez-Garrett is a Harvard-trained litigator who represents children and families harmed by social media platform design. After two decades in Big Law, she joined the Social Media Victims Law Center in 2022 and has since filed more than 1,200 complaints against technology companies. She also serves on the board of the Phone-Free Schools Movement.

Ryan Newman
Chief Deputy Attorney General, Florida Office of the Attorney General
Ryan Newman is Chief Deputy Attorney General of Florida. He previously served as General Counsel to Governor Ron DeSantis and, during the first Trump administration, in senior legal roles at the Department of Justice and Department of Defense. A former clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, he is a West Point graduate and Army veteran who earned his law degree with high honors from the University of Texas.

Meg Leta Jones (Moderator)
Georgetown University Professor and Chair, Communication, Culture, and Technology; Founding Faculty Member, Center for Digital Ethics; Adjunct Professor of Law
Meg Leta Jones is a technology law and policy scholar and cartoonist whose work examines how legal rules adapt to technological change, with a focus on privacy, digital consent, and family technology policy. She is the author of Ctrl+Z: The Right to Be Forgotten and The Character of Consent, and a founding faculty member of Georgetown’s Center for Digital Ethics. 

and 

Cal Newport (Opening Remarks)
Professor of Computer Science, Georgetown University; Founding Faculty Member, Center for Digital Ethics
Cal Newport is a computer scientist at Georgetown and a New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, and Slow Productivity. A contributing writer for The New Yorker, he writes widely on the intersection of technology, distraction, and modern life. He is a founding faculty member of the Center for Digital Ethics.