AUSTIN, Texas — Keeping kids safe online and giving parents more control is the crux of one bill filed in the Texas legislature this session. Rep. Shelby Slawson, R-Stephenville, filed House Bill 18. It’s one of House Speaker Dade Phelan’s top priorities.
“I am eager to see our chamber take on Big Tech, which for too long has taken advantage of the data and privacy of Texans and especially our children, who are vulnerable to predatory and addicting algorithms and advertisements on social media platforms,” Speaker Phelan wrote in a statement.
When teenagers scroll on social media, companies are collecting data for targeted ads and the algorithm, which feeds users content they’re most likely to interact with. Rep. Slawson’s bill would require online platforms to get parental consent before obtaining data from teens over 13 years old, allow parents to delete data that’s collected on their children, and allow parents to opt-out of “addiction-inducing algorithmic targeting.”
“You don’t get to turn it off,” Dr. Brandy Schumann, a counselor and clinical associate professor at Southern Methodist University, said of the algorithm. “So how can I say, ‘Stop showing me this?’ There’s a lack of control.”
The bill is focused on minors between 13 and 17 years old because the federal government already regulates how companies collect data on kids under 12.
“There’s this kind of space out there for our kids who aren’t quite adults yet, that still need some guardrails and some protections for them,” Rep. Slawson said.
She’s also concerned about trends that show social media use can lead to self-harm, substance abuse, or other mental health issues. As a mom, Rep. Slawson is looking out for her own daughters as well.
“We do our best to protect their physical wellbeing, their emotional wellbeing. And it’s incumbent upon us to also protect their online well being,” she said.
Jill Adams, president-elect of the Texas School Counselor Association, said regulations like this, paired with conversations at home, are vital to making sure kids stay mentally healthy while using social media.
“There is a definite correlation [with] depression. There’s been an uprise in eating disorders, just negative body image for boys and girls. And that definitely comes from a lot of social media exposure,” Adams said. “Additionally, I think there is the potential for kids to get addicted to technology, because their brains are still developing. Their frontal lobe doesn’t fully develop sometimes into their early- to mid-20s. And so they can become easily addicted to needing to be scrolling on their phone, or accessing their applications, or getting that next ‘like.’ And I do think that negatively impacts a lot more than just self-esteem. It’s their value; it’s their worth; it’s their identity.”
Adams thinks parents should be able to opt their kids out of the algorithm, as is suggested in Rep. Slawson’s bill.
“I do think that parents should have complete control over what their kids are seeing,” she said. “Using an algorithm, kids inadvertently are going to click here, or look at this, or research this, and that doesn’t mean that they need to have more information in front of them related to something that might have been a wrong click or something that they were curious about… And I think that the algorithms, malicious or not, have the ability and the potential to target and overload them with the wrong messages.”
Dr. Schumann said putting laws in place to regulate data collection and algorithms could help parents understand what’s healthy for their kids, and what’s not.
“What you see is with higher amounts of social media use, there’s less engagement and other activities; there’s less connection to other things. You’re impacting sleep patterns; you’re impacting all other aspects of development,” she said. “So it’s not so much that the social media is causing the self-harm, but you’re replacing some of the healthier things that were there with, sometimes, content that works against health. So it can be exposure, it can be ideas, it can be normalizing something that isn’t as common as it might seem online, because now it’s locked into your algorithm... So if I’m up on my phone, because I’m having a hard time going to sleep, now I’m training my body to stay up later, to engage in social media, then I’m impacting not only how much sleep I get, but the quality of sleep I get after. That’s going to impact decision-making and evaluation systems that we’re using to decide the difference between right and wrong.”
Dr. Schumann noted that many adults are also active social media users, and they’re modeling that behavior to younger generations. But she said sometimes being online can bring people together.
“I’ve definitely been in a room with teens where they’re all on a device, but they are sharing. They are interacting. They are creating a TikTok together. They are getting a recipe or following a trend and then doing something with it and then posting their piece of it. So I think we have to also be careful of judging it from a dated lens, and kind of dive also into the positive sides,” she said.
Dr. Schumann said social media has become an integral part of teens’ lives, and it’s not going anywhere.
“We need to get out of this sort of like ‘power control’ space with a teen, because ultimately we’ll lose,” she said. “We want to have a relationship with our teens at the end of the conversation, and we want them to come to us when there is a concerning topic or something that’s on their thread that shocked them.”
Both counselors noted that there are some positives to social media. Teens can feel a sense of connection with their friends and family online, and that was especially true during the pandemic.