Texas Legislature Revisits Social Media and Parental Rights

Estimated Time to Read: 14 minutes

Social media's effect on children returned to the Texas Capitol last week, where lawmakers heard competing perspectives about youth mental health, addictive technology, age verification and how far government should go in trying to protect minors online.

The Texas House Committee on Public Health met on August 20 as part of its interim work ahead of the 90th Legislative Session, which convenes in January 2027. Among several issues before the committee was a charge directing lawmakers to study the impact of social media platforms and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies on the mental health, cognitive development and behavioral well-being of minors in Texas.

It is a debate Texas lawmakers have had before, and one they are almost certain to have again in the next legislative session. The concerns are real. Excessive screen time, cyberbullying, online exploitation, addictive platform design and children's exposure to inappropriate content present difficult challenges for families. But the hearing also underscored a question that can get lost when those harms are discussed: Who should ultimately decide how a child uses social media?

For Texas lawmakers, the answer will help determine whether the next round of legislation gives parents better tools to make those decisions or increasingly makes the decisions on their behalf.

Texas House Hearing Revisits Social Media and Youth Mental Health

Much of the testimony before the House Public Health Committee focused on the potential relationship between social media use and declining youth mental health.

Witnesses discussed depression, anxiety, cyberbullying, exploitation, and the ways platforms are designed to hold users' attention. The argument has become increasingly familiar. Today's social media platforms are not simply passive communications tools. Algorithms determine what users see, platforms learn what keeps them engaged, and features such as notifications and endless scrolling are designed to bring users back.

Those concerns are particularly significant when the user is a child.

During the hearing, lawmakers heard testimony describing children encountering content related to suicide, self-harm, and other potentially dangerous subjects. Committee members also heard arguments that social media can provide meaningful connections and communities for young people who may otherwise feel isolated.

The competing testimony demonstrated why the issue is more complicated than simply determining whether social media is good or bad for children.

The relationship between social media and youth mental health is similarly complex. Family circumstances, school environments, social isolation, economic conditions and numerous other factors can influence a child's well-being. Even when social media contributes to a problem, establishing that relationship does not tell lawmakers which intervention will work or whether government intervention will create problems of its own.

Identifying a problem is not the same as identifying the proper role of government in solving it, and that matters because the social media debate playing out both nationwide and in Texas has increasingly moved beyond giving parents information and tools. Recent proposals have included age verification, government-mandated parental consent systems and even outright restrictions on minors' access to social media.

Texas Policy Research (TPR) has consistently argued that legitimate concerns about children online should not become a blank check for government regulation.

The Texas Social Media Debate Is Really About Parental Authority

One argument increasingly advanced by advocates of greater regulation is that parents simply cannot compete with sophisticated algorithms designed by some of the world's largest technology companies.

There is some truth embedded in that concern. Most parents do not understand precisely how recommendation algorithms operate, nor should they be expected to inspect the inner workings of every application their children use. Platforms can deploy enormous amounts of data and technological expertise to keep users engaged. But the conclusion that parents therefore cannot adequately protect their children carries a much larger implication when transformed into public policy.

If technological sophistication becomes sufficient justification for government intervention, the state can increasingly step between parents and children whenever lawmakers conclude that a product, service or technology has become too complicated for families to manage themselves. Social media would hardly be the end of that principle. The same rationale could be applied to video games, streaming services, AI, smartphones and technologies that do not yet exist.

Parents routinely make decisions involving complicated products and institutions they do not fully understand at a technical level. The appropriate response to information asymmetry should generally be to provide consumers with better information, transparency and meaningful control, not to presume that government should make the underlying decision for them.

TPR has repeatedly drawn this distinction in its previous work on children's online safety.

Parents should have access to meaningful parental controls. They should be able to understand what information is collected about their children and have tools to restrict features they consider harmful. Technology companies should not deceive families about how those controls work or make promises they do not keep. But there is a substantial difference between empowering parents to exercise authority and transferring that authority to the state.

The difficulty of parenting in the digital age does not make government the parent.

Texas Lawmakers Have Already Tested Social Media Restrictions

The debate at last week's hearing did not occur in a vacuum. During the 89th Legislative Session (2025), lawmakers considered House Bill 186 (HB 186), authored by State Rep. Jared Patterson (R-Frisco), which would have prohibited children under 18 from using covered social media platforms. The legislation also would have required a platform to verify that someone seeking to become an account holder was at least 18 before allowing the account.

TPR opposed the proposal because an outright social media ban would have removed parents from the decision entirely.

A parent could determine that a 17-year-old was mature enough to maintain an Instagram account. Another parent could decide that no child in the household should use social media until adulthood. Under an outright government prohibition, the judgment of either parent would ultimately be irrelevant.

The state would have already made the decision.

That is an important distinction because legislation can invoke parental rights while simultaneously narrowing the choices parents are permitted to make. Giving parents information, control, and the ability to consent is fundamentally different from prohibiting a parent from consenting at all.

HB 186 did not ultimately become law, but the broader debate continued.

Lawmakers instead approved Senate Bill 2420 (SB 2420), the App Store Accountability Act, authored by State Sen. Angela Paxton (R-McKinney), which created age-category verification requirements for app stores and parental consent requirements involving minors. The enrolled legislation defines a minor as someone younger than 18 whose disabilities of minority have not been removed.

That approach presents a different policy question than an outright social media ban, but it also demonstrates how quickly efforts to regulate children's online activity can implicate the privacy of everyone else.

Age Verification Raises Privacy Concerns

Age verification sounds straightforward until lawmakers confront a basic technological problem. A platform cannot reliably determine which users are children without establishing some mechanism for distinguishing children from adults. That means a requirement aimed at minors can ultimately affect everyone.

This has been a recurring concern in TPR's coverage of Texas social media policy. Depending on how an age assurance system operates, users may be required to provide personal information, credentials, or other data sufficient to establish that they fall within a particular age category.

Even HB 186, which included restrictions on retaining or using personal information obtained through its proposed age-verification process, illustrates the dilemma. The bill still required a system capable of verifying that a prospective account holder was at least 18.

Privacy safeguards matter. Data minimization matters. Requirements governing how information can be retained, transferred or used can reduce risk. But none of them completely eliminates the consequences of creating an infrastructure in which Texans are increasingly expected to establish something about their identity before accessing lawful digital services.

The safest sensitive information is often information that was never collected. The concern becomes particularly significant when age verification expands beyond narrow categories of content and becomes part of the ordinary infrastructure through which Texans access applications, websites, and online communications.

A policy intended to protect children should not quietly normalize an internet in which adults routinely have to establish that they are adults before they can participate.

Free Speech Is Part of the Texas Youth Online Safety Debate

Privacy is not the only constitutional consideration. TPR has previously examined court decisions involving social media regulation and the First Amendment, including the broader tension between state efforts to regulate online platforms and constitutional protections for speech. That tension does not disappear because legislation is intended to protect children.

Social media contains material parents may reasonably consider harmful or inappropriate for their children. It also contains political speech, religious discussion, news, educational resources, advocacy and ordinary communication among friends and family.

A government restriction on access to a communications platform therefore operates differently from a law targeting a particular unlawful act. Texas should aggressively enforce laws against child exploitation, fraud, threats and other criminal conduct online. Where genuine gaps exist, lawmakers can consider narrowly tailored remedies. But the existence of unlawful or objectionable content on a platform does not automatically justify restricting access to the platform itself. Nor should lawmakers treat speech concerns as merely theoretical. Courts around the country have been asked repeatedly to determine where state authority over social media ends and constitutional protections begin. At the same time, civil litigation against technology companies continues to test whether companies can be held responsible for allegedly harmful product-design decisions. A Los Angeles jury, for example, found Instagram and YouTube liable earlier this year in litigation alleging their products were designed to addict young users.

Those are different legal questions, and Texas policymakers should resist collapsing them into a single argument for broader government control. Protecting children and protecting constitutional rights are not mutually exclusive goals. Good policy should be expected to accomplish both.

Polling Shows Texans Still Trust Parents Over Government

There is also evidence that Texans understand this distinction. TPR previously examined polling on social media regulation that found substantial concern about children's online safety while also showing greater trust in parents than government to make decisions involving children's social media use.

That combination should not be surprising.

Texans can believe social media poses genuine risks to children without believing lawmakers in Austin should decide which platforms every child may use. Those positions are not contradictory. In fact, they provide a reasonable starting point for the state's approach. Parents need meaningful information. They need effective parental controls. They should know what information companies collect about their children and have tools to restrict features they believe are harmful.

The government's proper role is narrower. It should enforce generally applicable laws, protect children from criminal exploitation, ensure companies do not deceive consumers, and address clearly demonstrated harms through narrowly tailored policies.

The fact that parenting is difficult does not make government better at it.

Protecting Free Speech and Digital Expression

The questions raised during the House Public Health hearing also fit within a broader debate over how Texas responds to technological change. The Texas Liberty Compact, TPR's ten-point legislative agenda for the 90th Legislature, calls on policymakers to Protect Free Speech and Digital Expression. The underlying principle is straightforward: technological change should not become a pretext for government censorship or control.

That does not mean government has no role. The Compact calls for opposing blanket bans on lawful digital platforms, narrowly tailoring digital regulation to demonstrable harms, protecting parental authority, ensuring digital regulation complies with constitutional safeguards, and prioritizing targeted consumer protection measures over broad speech controls.

Those principles offer a useful test for proposals likely to emerge from the interim.

If lawmakers identify deceptive business practices, exploitation of children or other unlawful conduct, those harms can be addressed directly. If parents lack meaningful information about how a platform operates, policymakers can examine transparency requirements. If companies advertise parental controls that do not function as promised, ordinary consumer protection principles may provide a remedy.

None of those approaches requires Texas to regulate lawful speech broadly or assume responsibility for decisions properly belonging to families.

This distinction will become increasingly important as AI, social media algorithms and other technologies continue to evolve. Government regulation written in response to one platform or technological concern can establish authority that remains long after the technology itself has changed.

The Legislature should therefore judge online safety proposals not only by what lawmakers intend them to accomplish, but by the government power required to accomplish them.

What Texas Lawmakers Should Consider Before the 2027 Session

The August hearing is unlikely to be the final word on social media and youth mental health. If anything, it offered a preview of arguments lawmakers will encounter when the 90th Legislature convenes. There will almost certainly be pressure to do more.

Before doing so, lawmakers should examine what Texas has already enacted and what courts have said about similar efforts. The debates surrounding HB 186 and SB 2420 offer lessons about parental authority, age verification and the constitutional complications accompanying broad digital regulation.

New proposals should begin with evidence of an identifiable harm and a clear explanation of why existing law is inadequate. The remedy should then be tailored to that harm rather than using concern about children as justification for regulating an entire platform or category of lawful speech.

Age verification deserves particular scrutiny. Lawmakers should understand what information must be collected, who possesses it, how it is protected, and whether the same objective can be accomplished without requiring Texans to establish their age or identity before engaging in lawful online activity.

The same scrutiny should apply when legislation is described as empowering parents.

The relevant question is not whether parents appear somewhere in the regulatory process. It is whether parents retain meaningful authority to make the ultimate decision for their own children.

Lawmakers should also distinguish between holding technology companies accountable for actual wrongdoing and regulating them because government disagrees with how consumers use their products. Fraud, deceptive business practices and unlawful exploitation are legitimate subjects of government enforcement. Broad restrictions on lawful speech or access require an entirely different justification.

Texas should also be wary of building regulatory regimes around today's technology. The platforms popular with teenagers now may be irrelevant several years from now, while artificial intelligence and technologies that do not yet exist will present entirely new challenges.

Durable policy should be grounded in durable principles rather than chasing each technological development with another government mandate.

Texas Should Empower Parents Without Becoming the Parent

TPR submitted written testimony to the House Public Health Committee acknowledging the legitimate concerns surrounding children's use of social media while urging lawmakers to preserve parental authority, constitutional rights and privacy.

Those positions are not in conflict. Children can face genuine dangers online while parents remain the people primarily responsible for deciding how their children navigate those dangers. Social media companies can design products that create legitimate concerns without government becoming the ultimate arbiter of what every Texas family may access. Lawmakers can protect children from exploitation without constructing systems that require millions of Texans to surrender their privacy to prove they are adults.

The distinction is between protecting people from demonstrable harm and protecting them from choices government believes they should not be allowed to make.

The Texas Liberty Compact provides a useful standard for maintaining that distinction. Protect constitutional rights. Target actual harms. Preserve parental authority. Prefer narrow remedies over sweeping controls. Recognize that government power created for one ostensibly good purpose rarely confines itself to that purpose forever.

Social media has made parenting more complicated. Artificial intelligence and whatever technologies follow it will likely make the task more complicated still. If technological complexity becomes sufficient justification for transferring parental authority to government, there will be few areas of family life ultimately beyond the state's reach.

Texas can choose a better path. Protect children from genuine harm. Hold wrongdoers accountable. Give parents better information and better tools. Protect Texans' privacy, free speech and digital expression.

And then trust parents to parent.

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