What Georgia Schools Need to Know About Bill 351: Protecting Georgia’s Children on Social Media Act

Georgia’s district IT leaders and administrators are preparing to meet the latest regulations in student online safety with the state's recent Senate Bill 351 (“Protecting Georgia’s Children on Social Media Act”), which goes into effect on July 1, 2025.

The primary focus areas in the “Protecting Georgia’s Children on Social Media Act” include:

• Requiring schools to adopt social media policies
• Combating cyberbullying in schools
• Promoting responsible digital citizenship
• Requiring social media platforms themselves to incorporate age verification methods and protections for minors

Below, we dive into three of the new requirements that K-12 schools and their IT teams are expected to address, and EdTech solutions to help your district meet Georgia's latest standards.

3 requirements of SB.351 that impact Georgia’s K-12 schools

 

Key updates from Section 2-3: Acceptable use policies

• By October 1, 2025: Schools are required to adopt an acceptable-use policy to prevent/prohibit the use of school equipment to access materials that are obscene or harmful to minors
  • Schools must provide opportunities for parents and guardians to collaborate regarding appropriate internet access for such students
    
    
• By October 15th of each year (starting 2025-26 school year): Schools are required to submit their acceptable-use policy to the State Board of Education for review. 
  • This policy must identify the technology being used to block access to inappropriate material (such as web filters)
  • The State Board of Education may withhold state funding to a school that fails to comply, or is not using technology protection measures that meet set standards

• By April 1st of each year (starting 2025-26 school year): The State Department of Education will establish standards for technology protection measures to be used by schools
  • These will include measures and controls for parents/guardians to supervise and manage appropriate internet access for students on school-issued devices being used outside of school property

Jump to: Preparing for Section 2-3 with Linewize's parent app

Key updates from Section 2-4: Blocking social media on school-issued devices

• By April 1, 2026: Schools are required to:
  • Adopt a social media policy that prohibits students from accessing social media platforms on school-issued devices
    • The bill does include an exception: Students can access social media platforms as directed by and under the supervision of school personnel, to access age-appropriate educational resources during a school related activity
  • Establish procedures for parents/guardians to request information about what social media platforms have been accessed, and to prohibit their child from accessing specific social media platforms
  • Submit a copy of your social media policy to the Department of Education.
    • Within your submission, identify any software program or other technology being used to block social media
• The State Board of Education may withhold state funding to a school that fails to adopt, submit, or enforce its social media policy.

Jump to: Preparing for Section 2-4 with Linewize's filter.

Key updates from Section 2-5: Continuing to combat cyberbullying

• By July 1, 2026: Schools are required to:
  • Add the following to your anti-bullying policy:
    • Methods of notifying parents and guardians that a student has committed an offense of bullying, or is a target/suspected victim of bullying
    • Referrals to resources for counseling or other appropriate services, when appropriate
  • Establish a process to regularly evaluate and update tech solutions that aid in prevention of cyberbullying (e.g. digital monitoring software)

Jump to: Preparing for Section 2-5 with Linewize Monitor.

Helping Georgia schools meet state requirements with Linewize

 

Preparing for Section 2-4: Blocking social media with Linewize's School Manager filter

Ahead of July 1, 2025, district IT departments will need to ensure that social media platforms are blocked across school-issued devices. This will likely require reconfiguration of your web filter’s social media rules and policies.

We designed our filter to make it as easy as possible for IT to adjust filter rules flexibly. Linewize’s content-aware hybrid filter enables your IT team to:

• Block all social media platforms with simple rule configuration and categories
• Leverage Linewize's hybrid approach, combining the cloud with on-premise filtering, to enforce your social media policy on unmanaged and guest devices, as well as school-issued devices
• See which sites students are accessing with robust reports
• Blur inappropriate images (pictured right) on the web in real time with the Content-aware Module, giving your district an additional layer of security and protection from harmful content online

 

When integrated with our classroom management solution, your IT team can also give teachers the ability to easily block and unblock applicable filter rules (such as social media platforms) during class time.

Learn more about Linewize's filter or request a proof of concept to try it in action.

Preparing for Section 2-5: Preventing and responding to cyberbullying with Linewize Monitor

This school year, Georgia's K-12 admins and IT leaders should begin to review your anti-bullying policies and the technologies you're using to monitor and address cyberbullying on school devices.

It will likely fall to IT departments to develop a process for evaluating tech solutions ahead of the July 1, 2026 deadline; and to ensure the digital monitoring software you have in place will effectively identify cyberbullying incidents, enable staff to respond to incidents quickly, and maintain compliance for your district.

Linewize Monitor, our advanced student threat detection solution, is designed to give your district:

• Risk detection across all digital spaces — going beyond G-suite to assess what students type on social media, chat applications, and more
• 24/7 human moderation of alerts, to reduce false positives and notify your team immediately of serious concerns, so you can intervene in a timely manner
• Compliance with all four iKeepSafe certifications (Monitor is the only solution of its kind to hold all four)
• Alerting profiles to efficiently send the right alerts to the right staff quickly, with contextual screenshots to inform decision-making

Learn more about Linewize Monitor or request a free Student Safety Audit to try it in your district.

Preparing for Section 2-3: Enabling parents to supervise online activity with Qustodio Parent App

If your district sends school-issued devices home with students, you can expect new guidance from Georgia's State Department of Education by April 1, 2026 that will include standards around tools for parents and guardians to manage their child’s internet access on those devices.

IT leaders will be closely involved in the implementation of such parental controls. In preparation, now is the time to research solutions available to you that allow adequate parent supervision — without compromising your school’s filter rules and safety policies on school-issued devices.

To help schools engage their parent community without overburdening district IT teams, we offer advanced parental controls through our world-leading Qustodio Parent App, at no additional cost for districts using our hybrid web filter or classroom management solution. 

Qustodio Parent App allows you to:

• Give parents visibility into their children’s online activity on school-issued devices
• Decide what parents can see and when — during or outside of school hours, or 24/7
• Enable parents to expand on your fixed filter rules on school-issued devices outside of school hours
• Provide parents a direct line to contact our customer support
• Offer parents the option to protect one personal device per student at no additional cost

Learn more about offering the Qustodio Parent App to your school community.

Linewize is your long-term strategic partner for the future of student online safety

Georgia’s Senate Bill 351 can be read in full here. As your district begins to prepare for each piece of this bill, please contact our team any time with questions. Linewize is here to help you every step of the way.

Our solutions are designed to not only help you meet federal and local standards, but also to help you go beyond compliance, elevating your digital safety and wellbeing strategy to a standard capable of meeting today's challenges.