Estimated Time to Read: 14 minutes
Efforts to ban social media use by minors have resurfaced in Texas following Australia’s decision to prohibit access for users under the age of 16. In a recent Dallas Morning News op-ed and subsequent social media posts, Texas State Representative Jared Patterson (R-Frisco) argues that Texas should follow Australia’s lead, framing the issue as a matter of decisive action to protect children from a growing mental health crisis allegedly fueled by social media platforms.
The concerns he raises are not frivolous. Parents across Texas are rightly worried about the content their children encounter online, the addictive nature of some digital platforms, and the real harm caused by online predators and exploitation. But acknowledging the seriousness of these problems does not mean every proposed solution is justified. Public policy must still respect constitutional limits, parental authority, and the principle that government power should be restrained, even when exercised with good intentions.
House Bill 186 (HB 186), authored by Patterson in the 89th Legislative Session earlier this year, fails that test.
Brief Legislative History of House Bill 186
House Bill 186 gained significant momentum during the 89th Texas Legislative Session. The bill passed the Texas House of Representatives by a wide margin, receiving 116 votes in favor and 25 votes against, with a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers both in favor and opposition. That vote reflected broad concern among lawmakers about the role of social media in the lives of children and mounting public pressure to take action.
After clearing the House, HB 186 was referred to the Senate State Affairs Committee, where it was considered and voted out favorably by an 8 to 3 margin. The bill was subsequently placed on the Senate Intent Calendar, making it eligible for consideration by the full Texas Senate.
Despite clearing both the House and a key Senate committee, HB 186 was never brought up for a vote before the full Senate. As the legislative calendar expired, the session concluded without the bill receiving final passage. As a result, HB 186 did not become law, despite having advanced further than many other high-profile measures.
This procedural outcome matters. It reflects not only the compressed timelines of the legislative process, but also lingering concerns among senators about the bill’s constitutional implications, its impact on parental authority, and the precedent it would set for state regulation of lawful speech and online activity.
What House Bill 186 Actually Does
HB 186 does not narrowly regulate harmful content or target illegal conduct online. Instead, it establishes a categorical prohibition on social media use for anyone under the age of 18. This ban applies regardless of parental consent, the maturity of the minor, or the purpose for which social media is being used. A 17-year-old would be barred from using social media even for school activities, religious groups, civic engagement, or communication with extended family.
To enforce this prohibition, the bill requires social media platforms to verify that every user is at least 18 years old before allowing account creation. Verification must rely on public or private transactional data rather than self-attestation. While the bill states that personal information collected during verification must be deleted after use, it still mandates the creation of systems that collect, process, and validate identity-linked data as a condition of accessing online communication.
Violations of these requirements are enforced through the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, granting the Texas Attorney General broad authority to pursue enforcement actions. Although the bill does not create a new regulatory agency, it significantly expands government reach by transforming access to lawful speech and communication into a regulated transaction subject to state enforcement.
Florida’s Experience Reveals the Same Tension
Texas is not alone in grappling with these questions. Florida recently considered similar legislation aimed at restricting minors’ access to social media. In an earlier iteration, Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed a proposed ban, explicitly citing the importance of parental rights and the need to preserve anonymous speech. His veto message acknowledged that protecting children matters, but warned that placing government officials in charge of speech decisions raises serious constitutional concerns.
That position briefly aligned with a broader philosophy of parental empowerment. However, Florida ultimately enacted a revised version of the legislation that still imposed significant restrictions. The law requires age verification for all users, bans children under fourteen from social media, and allows limited access for fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds only with parental approval.
While supporters describe this as a compromise, the core problem remains. The state still conditions access to speech on identity verification and inserts government authority into decisions that should belong to families. Florida’s experience illustrates how quickly the goal of empowering parents gives way to bureaucratic control once lawmakers decide that government must be the primary referee of online behavior.
This inconsistency is especially striking given the emphasis many of the same lawmakers place on parental empowerment in other contexts, such as education. If parents are trusted to choose schools, curricula, and learning environments, it is difficult to justify why they suddenly cannot be trusted to guide their children’s online activity.
Even with parental consent provisions, Florida’s law still conditions speech on state-mandated identity verification, leaving the core constitutional problem unresolved.
Federal Courts Are Striking Down These Laws for the Same Reasons
Recent federal court decisions underscore why proposals like HB 186 face serious constitutional obstacles. Recently, a federal judge struck down Louisiana’s social media age-verification law, finding that it violated the First Amendment and could not be enforced as written.
In a 94-page opinion, U.S. District Judge John W. deGravelles issued a permanent injunction against Louisiana’s Secure Online Child Interaction and Age Limitation (SOCIAL) Act, a law that required social media companies to verify users’ ages, obtain parental consent for minors, restrict certain advertising practices, and limit direct messaging between adults and minors. The court concluded that the law’s age-verification and parental-consent requirements imposed substantial burdens on access to lawful speech.
The judge also found the statute unconstitutionally vague, noting that the law failed to clearly define which platforms were covered. That ambiguity, the court explained, left companies guessing whether they were subject to enforcement, a flaw that alone was sufficient to invalidate the law. More importantly, the court held that forcing users to provide sensitive identifying information as a condition of accessing online speech threatened anonymous expression and would chill lawful communication.
Citing Supreme Court precedent, Judge deGravelles emphasized that while states may seek to protect children from harm, that authority does not include a broad power to restrict the ideas to which minors may be exposed. Cutting off access to social media altogether, the court wrote, prevents users from engaging in the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights.
Louisiana’s law is not an outlier. The ruling follows similar decisions in Ohio and Arkansas, where federal courts have sided with NetChoice and blocked state efforts to impose age-verification and access restrictions on social media platforms. The trend is increasingly clear. Courts are repeatedly finding that these laws, even when motivated by child protection, run afoul of constitutional protections for speech and anonymous expression.
This growing body of case law is directly relevant to Texas. HB 186 relies on the same mechanisms that courts have consistently rejected, including mandatory age verification, parental consent requirements enforced by the state, and categorical restrictions on access to online forums of expression. The legal vulnerabilities identified by federal judges elsewhere would almost certainly be raised against HB 186 if it were enacted.
Australia is not Texas
Australia’s social media ban is often presented as proof that such policies are both workable and necessary. But Australia operates under a legal system that does not recognize free speech as a fundamental constitutional right. Texas operates under the United States Constitution and, importantly, under its own state constitution, which contains explicit and robust protections for freedom of expression.
The differences are not academic. Policies that may be legally permissible in Australia face substantial constitutional barriers in Texas. Federal courts have repeatedly struck down laws that broadly restrict minors’ access to online speech. Importing Australia’s approach into Texas ignores these legal realities and risks misleading the public about what is constitutionally permissible.
Moreover, Australia’s ban does not eliminate harmful content, predatory behavior, or mental health struggles. It simply shifts how and where those problems manifest, while normalizing government-mandated identity verification as the price of digital participation. That should give Texans pause.
Correlation Is Not a Sufficient Basis for a Ban
State Rep. Patterson’s op-ed points to troubling statistics related to suicide rates, mental health challenges, and online exploitation. These trends deserve serious attention. However, correlation alone cannot justify sweeping bans on lawful activity.
Mental health outcomes are shaped by a complex mix of factors, including family stability, social isolation, economic stress, academic pressure, substance abuse, and broader cultural shifts. Social media may exacerbate some of these issues, but it can also provide connection, peer support, access to information, and community for young people who might otherwise be isolated.
Treating social media as the primary cause of these problems oversimplifies the issue and leads to blunt policy responses that fail to address underlying causes.
Understanding how teens actually use online platforms helps illustrate why blanket bans are mismatched to reality.
Recent research underscores how deeply embedded online platforms are in the daily lives of American teenagers. A 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that roughly one in five teens report being on platforms like YouTube or TikTok almost constantly, and more than one-third say they use at least 1 major online platform at that frequency. Nearly all teens report daily internet use, with many relying on online tools for communication, education, and information access.
The same research highlights a rapidly expanding digital landscape that extends well beyond traditional social media. Nearly two-thirds of teens report using AI chatbots, and roughly three in ten say they use them daily. Tools like ChatGPT are now widely used by teens for schoolwork, learning assistance, and general inquiry, blurring the line between social interaction, search, and education.
This reality complicates proposals like HB 186. Laws that attempt to carve out and prohibit access to certain categories of online platforms inevitably struggle to keep pace with how young people actually use the internet. As digital tools converge, efforts to ban or age-gate social media risk sweeping in far broader forms of lawful speech, information access, and educational use than lawmakers intend.
Rather than demonstrating the need for blanket bans, the Pew data underscores the limits of one-size-fits-all regulation. When online engagement is nearly universal and increasingly multifaceted, the question is not whether the state can realistically wall off large portions of the internet, but whether doing so is compatible with constitutional speech protections and parental authority.
The “Unsafe Product” Comparison Does Not Hold
Comparing social media to firearms, alcohol, or tobacco may be rhetorically appealing, but the analogy breaks down under scrutiny. Those products are regulated in ways that preserve parental consent and allow for graduated access. They do not impose blanket prohibitions that eliminate parental discretion entirely.
HB 186 does exactly that. It removes parents from the decision-making process and replaces individualized judgment with a statewide mandate. In doing so, it treats families as incapable of managing their own children and shifts responsibility away from parents and toward the state.
Free Speech and the Texas Constitution
Any serious evaluation of HB 186 must grapple not only with the First Amendment but also with the independent and often stronger free speech protections found in the Texas Constitution. Article I, Section 8 guarantees that every person shall be at liberty to speak, write, or publish their opinions on any subject, subject only to responsibility for abuse of that privilege. Texas courts have long recognized that this provision can provide broader protection than its federal counterpart.
HB 186 conflicts directly with this guarantee by conditioning access to modern forums of communication on government-mandated age verification and by banning entire categories of lawful speech for minors regardless of parental consent. Social media platforms are not merely entertainment products. They are central venues for expression, association, political discussion, religious engagement, and civic participation.
The Texas Constitution does not limit its speech protections to adults alone. While the state has a legitimate interest in protecting children, that interest does not erase constitutional limits or authorize blanket prohibitions on expression. A policy that bars minors from accessing speech and information online without individualized consideration or parental involvement pushes far beyond what Texas constitutional law has historically allowed.
Parental Responsibility Versus State Substitution
Parents already possess a wide array of tools to manage their children’s online activity. These include device-level controls, platform-specific settings, content filters, and direct supervision. These tools are imperfect, but they allow families to make decisions based on their own values, circumstances, and children’s needs.
HB 186 rejects this framework entirely. It tells parents that their judgment is insufficient and that the state will decide what is appropriate for their children. Rather than reinforcing personal responsibility, the bill undermines it by transferring authority from families to the government.
Free Enterprise and Privacy Concerns
Mandatory age verification systems impose significant compliance costs and legal risks on businesses. Large technology companies may be able to absorb these burdens, but smaller platforms and startups may not. Over time, this discourages innovation, reduces competition, and limits the availability of alternative platforms that could offer safer or more family-friendly environments.
Ironically, a bill marketed as protecting children also creates new privacy risks. Age verification requires the collection and processing of sensitive personal or transactional data, expanding the number of data repositories vulnerable to breach. These systems create new targets for hackers and increase the risk of identity theft for both minors and adults.
Limited Government and Dangerous Precedent
HB 186 represents a significant expansion of government authority over lawful online activity. Once the state asserts the power to ban categories of speech and condition access to communication on identity verification, the boundaries of that power become increasingly difficult to define.
Good intentions do not eliminate the need for restraint. Policies adopted in the name of safety today set precedents that will be applied tomorrow, often in ways their authors did not anticipate.
A Better Path Forward
Protecting children online does not require banning social media. A liberty-aligned approach would focus on empowering parents, improving digital literacy, enforcing existing laws against exploitation and abuse, and encouraging voluntary industry safeguards. These approaches preserve family autonomy while addressing real risks without expanding state control.
They are harder than blanket bans, but they are consistent with a free society.
Conclusion
Rep. Patterson is right to be concerned about the well-being of children, but concern alone does not justify abandoning constitutional limits or parental authority. Where he is wrong is in assuming that state-mandated bans, compelled age verification, and speech restrictions are the solution.
House Bill 186 trades liberty for the illusion of safety. It undermines parental authority, conflicts with the free speech protections guaranteed by the Texas Constitution, increases privacy risks, and expands government power in ways that should concern Texans across the political spectrum.
Texas does not need to follow Australia’s lead. It needs to uphold its own constitutional traditions by trusting families, respecting individual rights, and resisting the urge to regulate away complex social problems through blunt government force.
That is why Texas Policy Research recommended a NO vote on House Bill 186 during the 89th Legislative Session, and why we will continue to oppose similar legislation unless it is fundamentally altered to protect liberty and parental rights.
Texas Policy Research relies on the support of generous donors across Texas.
If you found this information helpful, please consider supporting our efforts! Thank you!
