Chasing Hope for America’s Children: Child Safety Online: Policy, Prevention, and Safety by Design (A Conversation with Clinical Health Psychology Graduate Student and Research Assistant, Mary Taylor “MT” Goeltz)

In the seventh episode of Chasing Hope for America’s Children, Kendall Marlowe speaks with Mary Taylor “MT” Goeltz, a graduate student in the Clinical Health Psychology Program at the University of Colorado Denver, about the rapidly evolving challenge of keeping children safe online.MT brings a developmental and clinical psychology lens to the conversation, drawing on her work with the Eugene Farley Health Policy Center and the Kempe Center on a new policy brief focused on the legislative landscape of online child safety. Together, she and Kendall explore how children’s growing exposure to social media, apps, AI, chatbots, and other digital platforms has created new risks for exploitation, sextortion, harmful content, and self-harm.Their conversation examines what policymakers, platforms, parents, and communities are trying to do in response—and why prevention must be part of the solution. MT discusses digital safety education, platform accountability, age assurance, parental controls, and safety-by-design approaches that build protections into online spaces before harm occurs.The episode asks a critical question for everyone who cares about children and families: how can we create digital environments where children are not only protected from harm, but supported in their development, autonomy, learning, and connection?