The Republican-controlled Texas Senate is poised to pass legislation that advanced overwhelmingly in the GOP-controlled House that would restrict minors from accessing social media.
HB 186, which passed the House 116-25 on April 30, would prohibit minors from creating social media accounts and require users to verify their ages. The bill also would allow parents to request their child’s social media account to be deleted, and a company must comply within 10 days.
Also, any website that allows users to curate and create content is considered a social media website and will be prohibited from minors, excluding news and sports websites. Companies would have until April 2026 to comply with the ban.
“Like so many parents across our state, I’ve watched my children grow up in a world that feels less and less safe, not because of where they go physically, but because of where they go online, in spaces that my wife and I cannot possibly monitor at all times,” state Sen. Adam Hinojosa, R-Corpus Christi, co-sponsor of the bill, said during a Senate State Affairs Committee hearing last week, The Texas Tribune reported Monday.
The bill passed the House the day after it passed legislation that would require social media platforms to have a warning label concerning the association between a minor’s social media usage and significant mental health issues.
As of June 2024, Texas was among 10 states to pass laws restricting children’s access to social media, according to the Age Verification Providers Association. Federal courts have blocked such legislation in three other states.
But Texas’ social media ban for children under 18 would be the strictest in the nation. Florida is the only other state with such a ban, but it’s for those under 14, and the GOP-controlled Legislature is working to extend the ban to those under 16.
“This is a real-life situation,” Texas state Rep. Jared Patterson, who co-sponsored HB 186, told Newsmax on May 6. “Our kids are killing themselves at a clip that we’ve never seen before in the history of our state, and it’s time that we put our kids’ mental health on the same level we do their physical well-being.”
“We have laws protecting kids” from purchasing harmful products, such as guns or tobacco, and “yet, they have access to this dangerous product that the surgeon general in 2024 said is just as addictive as cigarettes,” said Patterson.
Last week, the Texas Legislature sent a Senate-backed bill to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk that establishes age-verification requirements and mandates parental consent before a minor is allowed to download or make purchases within software applications, according to the Tribune.
“We have the ability and the power to act today. With House Bill 186, we confront the evil before us and boldly say, You cannot have our children,” Hinojosa said, according to the Tribune.
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