Texas senators heard calls to strengthen protections for children using social media, gaming platforms, and messaging apps, including stronger age-verification measures during a committee hearing on Monday.
Witnesses before the Senate Committee on State Affairs testified to gaps in protections for minors using social media and gaming consoles, saying parents often lack effective tools to protect children online. They urged lawmakers to require online platforms to build stronger protections for minors rather than rely on parental controls.
Dr. Lauren Gamble emphasized the addictive nature of gaming platforms, explaining how certain features make it difficult for children to stop using them.
“These platforms are intentionally designed to make it really difficult to stop. There’s features like streaks, persistent notifications, rewards, leaderboards, and social pressure mechanisms that encourage kids to just stay online continuously.”
She noted that addictive games often lead to problems with sleep, school, health, and relationships. Serious threats include sexual predators, trafficking, cyberbullying, and eating disorders.
Jennifer Ritchie, co-founder and CEO of Haven, an online messaging platform, noted that “63 percent of Gen Alpha and Gen Z, ages 2 to 29, trafficking victims happen in digital chat. They’re shown pornography, extreme violence, bestiality, terrorist extremism.”
Christina Green with the Children’s Advocacy Centers of Texas explained the dangers of online crime. Law enforcement often struggles to gather evidence due to disappearing chats, burner accounts, and predators who move to less traceable apps. Even in cases that are solved, Green says the damage stays with the victim.
“The harm to them, if they are exposing themselves via sexual images that are being requested by alleged perpetrators, are just as harmful as if they had experienced contact abuse. The trauma, the PTSD, and the suicide risk is just as high,” Green said.
Witnesses argued that parents cannot address the threat alone.
“You cannot out-parent an algorithm,” said Dr. Daniel Flint.
He explained that while many blame parents for lack of control over their children’s online activity, parental controls are often broken or difficult to navigate. Even heavily involved parents struggle to keep up with current trends, and children often find ways to bypass parental controls.
Maureen Molak, whose son David committed suicide after being cyberbullied, said, “The real failures were inadequate, hard-to-use parental tools, deceptive age ratings, aggressive microtransactions, loot boxes, constant notifications, and the lack of meaningful customer support for parents.”
Several changes were discussed to improve protection measures, including an emphasis on “safety by design.” Safety by design would require apps and console games to have built-in measures protecting minors instead of only manual parental control.
“We need legislation that mandates safety by default, completely stripping out addictive engagement loops, removing predatory gambling mechanics, and holding platforms legally responsible,” said Dr. Flint.
Witnesses discussed House Bill 18, also known as the SCOPE Act, which requires digital service providers to protect minors from harmful content.
David Dunmoyer of the Texas Public Policy Foundation noted that HB 18 conflicts with Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act. This conflict allows apps to place blame for in-app messages on third-party sources rather than assuming liability.
Dunmoyer suggested that the language of HB 18 be amended so that it is constitutional. He also proposed expanding the App Store Accountability Act to include game consoles and Roblox.
“Making sure the definitions that we have in statute include these other applications like Discord, and other things that have disappearing features too, where the content disappears and then we lose our ability to gather evidence to prosecute as well,” said Dunmoyer.
State Sen. Adam Hinojosa (R–Corpus Christi) expressed a desire to work with the panel to adjust House Bill 186, which did not pass last session, or author entirely new legislation to implement Dunmoyer’s suggestions.
Lawmakers are expected to consider additional protections for minors online during the upcoming legislative session, which begins January 12.
