Texas House passes bill banning minors from creating social media accounts
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Texas is setting itself up to be a leader in regulating the social media sphere.
Today, the Texas House passed a bill 116-25 that would prohibit children from using social media. House Bill 186 requires a strict verification process to ensure account holders are at least 18 years old.
“I firmly believe that social media is the most harmful product that our kids have legal access to in Texas,” said Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, the bill’s author.
‘It is our kids killing themselves’
Patterson said HB 186 is the most important one he will lay out this session, citing rising rates of self-harm and suicide amongst minors linked to social media use.
Patterson previously cited a study conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate in 2022. Researchers created a social media account posing as a 13-year-old user, and interacted with content related to body image and mental health issues. Within 2.6 minutes, content related to suicide was recommended. Within eight minutes, content related to eating disorders was shown.
“ER visits are up, anorexia amongst girls are up, pornography addiction and aggression amongst boys up,” said Patterson. “It is our kids killing themselves at a clip that we’ve never seen before in the history of the state of Texas, and it’s all correlated back to this rapid rise in social media use for young people.”
Right before the vote, Patterson dedicated his bill to those who took their own lives after dealing with social media addiction.
“In honor of David Molak and the countless other children who have lost their lives due to the harms of social media,” Patterson said.
Maurine Molak, David’s mother, has spent the last nine years advocating nationally and in Texas for stricter reforms.
“I lost my son David to suicide nine years ago after he was cyber bullied for months by a group of students on Instagram that were tormenting him,” Molak said. “I was very moved at [Patterson’s] thoughtfulness in remembering David and the pain that David went through.”
‘This law is clearly unconstitutional’
Some opponents of the bill feel the verification process will give social media companies too much information.
“What about the concern that this is helping these social media companies collect even more data on us,” State Rep. Erin Zwiener, D-Driftwood, asked Patterson.
Patterson said he’s concerned about even more data being collected for minors who use social media. He warned that harvesting data from young users is a privacy concern, and is used for targeted advertising and exploitative purposes.
“Social media companies know more about you than you know about yourself,” Patterson said. “Their business is not in connecting people so that they can chat and share cat memes. Their business is data collection.”
HB 186 requires that any personal information obtained for verification must be deleted immediately after the process.
Others voiced concerns about the rights of children.
“We believe this law is clearly unconstitutional,” attorney Brian Klosterboer with the Texas branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said. “HB 186 would ban all social media use by anyone under the age of 18, even if someone’s parent or guardian wants them to be able to use social media. For example, a lot of young people might be in youth groups or clubs or organizations that connect on social media. They might use social media for research, even to access, maybe tweets from government officials or academic researchers. All of that would be banned under this bill.”
However, Patterson believes social media is too harmful to not regulate.
“The U.S. Surgeon General came out in 2024 [and] compared this to cigarettes, the addictive nature of these products,” he said. “So it’s something that I’m going to continue to fight until we finally get something done on this issue.”
HB 186 Enforcement
In addition, the bill would empower Texas’s attorney general to hold social media platforms accountable if they allow underage users. It also grants parents the right to request the removal of their child’s existing social media account by contacting the platform directly. Upon receiving the request, the platform must delete the account within 10 days.
Last session, the legislature passed a bill banning minors from viewing explicit or pornographic content online, enacting a similar age verification process. It also held commercial entities liable if they failed to perform age verification. Patterson believes that banning sites with primarily explicit content is not enough to protect their mental health.
