Texas lawmakers met this week to discuss legislative solutions for protecting children from the harmful effects of excessive and unfettered access to the digital world.
Members of a Joint Committee to Study the Effects of Media on Minors heard testimony Tuesday on the health and developmental impact of exposure to various forms of media, in particular the internet and social media.
Witnesses focused on the damage that violent and addictive online pornography inflicts on young minds, adults’ use of social media and apps to exploit minors, and how tech companies profit from data mining kids’ online information.
State Rep. Jared Patterson (R–Frisco), who co-chaired the committee with State Sen. Bryan Hughes (R–Mineola), called access to social media “the biggest threat to our kids.”
Patterson noted that social media companies Snapchat, X, Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), and TikTok declined to participate in the hearing.
“It’s a slap in the face to every Texan when social media companies fail to show up and address the concerns we have for our children on such platforms,” he said.
Parents are concerned about social media-fueled epidemics of sex crimes, substance abuse, and suicides among children and teens, as well as the huge amounts of data that Big Tech is collecting to target and manipulate minors.
Addicting Minors to Media
Tami Brown Rodriguez, policy director for anti-trafficking organization Jaco Booyens Ministries, told lawmakers the rise of internet websites as platforms for explicit material has created a crisis.
“As a family member of somebody who was sexually trafficked for 15 years … and someone who fights exploitation every day, I bring both personal and professional insight into the urgent need to protect children from harmful internet and social media content,” said Rodriguez.
“Harmful online content rewires the developing brain,” she testified. “It fosters addictive cycles and primes children for grooming and exploitation. These websites normalize hyper-sexualized behavior and provide predators with tools to target vulnerable children.”
She said lawmakers need to align public policy to the realities of the digital age.
“It’s a moral imperative for us,” she said. “We have to do more to protect our children and our families.”
Dr. Linda McGee, a Houston-based pediatrician representing the Texas Medical Association and Texas Pediatric Society, told the committee that social media creates a harmful addiction and should be treated accordingly.
“We restrict other addictive substances,” McGee testified. “We restrict tobacco, gambling, alcohol, to 21 because we know that teenagers, specifically, their brains are primed for addiction.”
“It’s hard to ban. Social media is pervasive, and it does do some good things,” she said. “But what we can do is make it less addictive and safer. So we continue to advocate for the enforcement of restrictions of data mining on minors. If you take away the media companies’ ability to target minors with advertising, you take away their incentive to keep minors on their product.”
Former porn star-turned-pastor Joshua Broome testified that pornography and violence are being “normalized” on social media, and the average age of exposure has dropped from 11–12 years old to 8 years.
Broome said 90 percent of pornography also depicts violence.
“Why is it so detrimental? Well, social media is a funnel that leads to pornography,” he said. “In these kids’ prefrontal cortex, they don’t have the capacity to comprehend what they’re seeing.”
He told the committee most kids come across explicit content accidentally.
“We don’t have to look for over-sexualized content,” he said. “It’s looking for us.”
The result, Broome said, is that more kids are acting out what they see on their screens with other kids.
“Kids receive around 230 notifications a day at minimum,” he said. “It’s not an anomaly that pornography has violence in it. Violence sells, sex sells, and if they blend the two, now you have a recipe for disaster. And it’s indoctrinating not just kids, but our society.”
Broome testified that pornography makes more money than the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball combined.
“We care more about what we have the freedom to watch than the harm that it causes,” he added.
State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst (R-Brenham) asked Broome about the pervasive use of Chromebooks and smartphones in schools and the detrimental effects of excessive screen time.
“Kids are spending 60 percent more time with their face facing the phone than their face facing a parent or a teacher,” Broome responded. “So who is educating our kids?”
Kolkhorst said parents are also concerned about online school surveys that regularly ask kids as young as kindergarten to rate their emotional state.
“Where is that all being aggregated, and who’s using that data?” she asked. “I’m very nervous for our future.”
Anti-trafficking consultant Heidi Olson, who formerly worked for and managed a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program, testified that as many as two-thirds of minors are addicted to online pornography and one-third of kids have seen hardcore porn by the time they’re 12.
Olson said a majority of sexual assaults of children are now perpetrated by other minors.
“The more they view porn, the more they want to act out what they see,” she said.
Patterson asked Olson about an investigation conducted by the state of New Mexico that found Snapchat is the primary social media platform for sharing child sexual abuse material, recruiting sex trafficking victims, and sextortion.
“Snapchat is absolutely a main offender,” Olson confirmed. “I mean, just wreaking havoc in kids’ lives.”
The use of Snapchat, Instagram, and other social media apps has been cited in numerous cases of Texas teachers charged with sex crimes against students.
Legislative Solutions
Last session, lawmakers passed House Bill 18, known as the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act, and House Bill 1181 requiring age verification to access pornography websites.
But committee members said more needs to be done.
Patterson has re-filed legislation he proposed last session to prohibit minors from using social media.
McGee pointed to federal legislation—the Kids Online Safety Act and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act 2.0—as models for protecting children from manipulative social media practices.
“What is in these bills, which I don’t see as part of our current legislation here in Texas, is the prevention of unknown adults from communicating with minors and making the default settings for minors the most protective settings so parents don’t have to go on to each app and figure out how to change each setting,” McGee told lawmakers.
State Rep. Ellen Troxclair (R–Lakeway) has endorsed legislation to get smartphones out of all Texas classrooms.
Kolkhorst referenced last session’s Senate Bill 595 requiring parental consent before schools can subject students to any psychological testing, including online surveys. The measure passed the Senate but stalled in the House.
As for online pornography and social media, Kolkhorst said, “We can no longer tolerate this as a society. I don’t care who lobbies for what.”
I just have to say that if Big Tech and all these platforms and all these apps can create this, they can also prevent it. And what we’re talking about here is evil. Truly, it’s evil. It’s coming for our children, our society. The violence that you’re seeing is going to permeate every one of our lives, and it is going to touch our loved ones, and people we care about, and the people we represent …
Here’s the deal: I think we need to come at this with every tool in the toolbox and make everyone stand up and say that they want our children hooked on pornography, to say that they want to have a perpetuation of pedophilia.
She said protecting freedom of speech is important, but so is protecting children.
“I think Texas can lead on this, and Texas is big enough to move the needle and be aggressive,” added Kolkhorst. “And so anybody out there lobbying for Big Tech or the search engines or your apps, come ready, okay? Come with a heart full of goodness, so that we can literally get rid of this scourge that is destroying the lives of our children and future generations.”
The 89th Texas Legislature convenes on Tuesday, January 14.
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