On Thursday, the Texas House Public Health Committee discussed ways to address online youth safety and addiction.
AUSTIN, Texas — A landmark online child safety trial continued in California on Thursday.
Twenty-nine state attorneys general allege that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, intentionally designed its platforms to get young people addicted and boost its business profits.
The trial is seen as a significant moment in the fight for online child safety. As that trial plays out, Texas state lawmakers are looking at what the state can do to address online youth safety and addiction.
Experts say algorithms, infinitely scrolling feeds and the “likes,” comments and notifications all make social media platforms addictive for kids.
In some cases, these social media platforms can tell by the pupil dilation in your eyes how engaged you are in content and whether it resonates with you.
“It opens with variety,” David Dunmoyer with the Texas Public Policy Foundation said. “Measures what you linger on using all those invasive tactics, identifies your specific vulnerability and that specific language they use, your vulnerability, then takes you down that rabbit hole.”
Experts say this is all incredibly harmful to the mental health and well-being of children and teens. On Thursday, mental health professionals testified before the House Public Health Committee that social media is one of the most harmful products teens have legal access to in Texas.
Studies show that 95% of youth ages 13 to 17 report using social media, with more than a third saying they use it “almost constantly.”
Nearly 40% of children between ages 8 and 12 say they use social media, even though most platforms require you to be 13 to sign up.
“Multiple randomized controlled clinical trials show that even a seven-day abstinence from social media improves a teen’s depression, and that they report that their fear of missing out decreases at the end of the week,” Dr. David Flint, a pediatric psychologist at Texas Children’s, said. “When surveyed, 37% of teens themselves point to social media as the reason why youth mental health is getting worse.”
There is a growing body of evidence and research that says prolonged social media use is substantially harming the mental health and well-being of children and teens.
Research has linked constant social media use to a rise in self-harm rates for young people. In a recent Pew Research Center study, 48% of teens admitted that social media harms people their age.
“There is no developmental benefit to social media use, particularly for early adolescence. None,” Flint said. “You have the power to put guardrails up, and our children’s mental health cannot remain the collateral damage of a profitable algorithm.”
Flint told state lawmakers about the increasing number of young patients he’s seen with severe issues after being exposed to self-harm and eating disorder content on social media.
“For the very rare teen who has no social media, they just have parents who say, no, not at all. They’re the most well-adjusted, socially adept, mentally healthy kids who I’ve ever interacted with,” Flint said. “Obviously, being a child therapist, there’s some reason that they may be talking to me, but we don’t see any of the severe sleep concerns, constant suicidal ideation, body image, and self-esteem problems in those kids whose parents just say there is no social media in this household.”
A recent study by the Wall Street Journal found that an Instagram account for a 13-year-old saw three times as many prohibited posts containing nudity, 1.7 times as much violence, and 4.1 times as much bullying content as users above the age of 30.
A 2024 op-ed in the New York Times from former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned about the harmful effects of social media on minors and compared it to the addictive nature of cigarettes.
Australia banned all children under 16 from having social media. Some state lawmakers want Texas to follow their lead.
Last session, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill that would have restricted the access of minors to social media, but it died in the Texas Senate.
On Thursday, House lawmakers signaled they intend to try to pass a similar bill in 2027.
State Rep. John Bucy (D-Austin) said he has opposed the bill in the past because he believes the decision should be left to individuals, but he’s now come around to the idea of a ban for minors.
“I have a hard time not wanting to get on social media right now during this conversation,” Bucy said. “I think adults have to make those decisions for themselves. I think we have to protect kids, and this, to me, while not a physical substance, seems to be more damaging than most drugs and substances the minors could get their hands on.”
On the federal level, Congress has tried over the last three Sessions to pass the Kids Online Safety Act, but those efforts have stalled, and there is little optimism Congress will pass the legislation.
Several states have passed legislation aiming to ban minors from social media, but most of those laws are now tied up in legal battles.
State Rep. Jolanda Jones (D-Houston) said that should not deter Texas. She believes the state needs to take action to protect kids from the dangers of social media and hold the platforms accountable.
“I think we should lead the nation in trying to shut down these tech companies from destroying our kids and taking their lives, and we got plenty of courts. I’m like, let’s go for it,” Jones said. “We need to regulate. I believe in an all-out ban, and law school 101 is when you’re negotiating, you don’t start with your bottom line. You start with everything you ever wanted, and then you can negotiate down. I say all out ban and then let’s duke it out in court or on the House floor.”
Jones said it is established law that you can regulate conduct and not content.
“I think it would be a novel, legal, theory if it hadn’t been used already, that if it’s to the point where they can look at your retina and that’s conduct that’s not content, and that we could have a legal attack that the second what you’re doing is physiologically affecting the conduct of my children, then I can regulate it,” Jones said.
Tech companies say mandates like what lawmakers tried to pass last year are unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
State Rep. Katrina Pierson (R-Rockwall) expressed frustration with section 230 of the 1996 federal Communications Decency Act, which protects internet platforms from legal liability for third-party content. It states that websites are not the “publisher” of user-generated content, and platforms may host, filter, or moderate material without being sued as if they wrote it themselves. To eliminate or completely end the federal liability protections, Congress would have to pass a bill to repeal or sunset the statute formally.
“There’s a fundamental distinction between being a private company or being a public provider, a public square, and that’s where we need to draw that line and be very clear, because everything we’re trying to do is being held up because of Section 230,” Pierson said. “That’s why they are just not accountable to really anything, because that law protects them and that should be a crime.”
Some have compared the regulations to legislation lawmakers have previously passed requiring age-verification measures for pornography websites.
“You’re going to have children who find creative ways to circumvent the law,” Dunmoyer said. I don’t think that’s reason not to pursue it, because the goal is ultimately to shift back to the future when children are going out and getting skinned knees, instead of developing eating disorders from online content. The prohibition to the foundation is a way to get us to that future.”
While critics argue that banning kids from social media will not keep children safe, state lawmakers on the panel said they feel they have to do something to mitigate the harmful effects of social media.
In 2023, state lawmakers passed House Bill 18, known as the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act, and Gov. Abbott signed it. The SCOPE Act requires digital service providers to protect minors’ data, prevent minors from accessing harmful content, and give parents tools to manage their child’s use of the service.
The SCOPE Act allows parents to manage minor accounts, but children cannot unilaterally “opt out” of parental controls if a parent activates them. That is not the same elsewhere in the country. Rep. Jones called that “backward.”
“It is bothersome to me. I think we in this state should have a law that defaults to the parents having all the power, and the kids only get to do stuff that their parents allow them to do,” Jones said. “There’s no way on God’s green earth that any kid who’s under 18 should be able to tell any parent what they get to do, and they get to boot the parents out if the parents don’t go for it because most kids I know at some point in their life think they’re smarter than their parents.”
Last year, Texas passed a law mandating app stores to verify users’ ages and get parental consent for minors who want to download apps or make in-app purchases on mobile phones.
“I believe we can build on the last four years by regulating content neutral product design features that encourage compulsive use, turn off dangerous algorithms for minors, require stronger safeguards, safeguards by default, require more parental tools, and pass a robust chat bot bill to address this emerging technology used by so many children and teens,” said Maurine Molak, who has spent the last decade fighting against online harms and cyberbullying on social media after she lost her 16-year-old son David to suicide in 2016. “Texas has led in protecting our children from social media harms. If the federal government continues to fail to act, Texas must continue to lead.”
State Rep. Ann Johnson (D-Houston) said if the state wanted to, it could mandate only flip phones for Texans under 18, like they restrict driving a car until 16, smoking cigarettes until 18 and drinking until 21.
“If we just determined the vehicle and not the content of the subject matter and just said, hey, if you’re under the age of 18, you can possess a flip phone, that way you can text your parents or call them if there’s a mass shooting in your school, but you can’t get on social media,” Johnson said. “Is there any reason why we couldn’t pass that as legislation? None.”
Meanwhile, out in California, attorneys for Meta were back in federal court on Thursday. The bipartisan coalition of states is collectively seeking as much as $1.4 trillion in damages.
Meta has denied the allegations, and a spokesperson for the company says the AGs offer no proof anyone was misled. Meta says it has a long history of protecting children on its platform and the AGs are attempting to penalize Meta for industry-wide challenges like age verification.
The trial is scheduled to last at least six weeks and feature testimony from top Meta executives, including founder Mark Zuckerberg.
