Texas Social Media Ban Dead For Now

The Texas social media ban for anyone under 18 thankfully is now dead (for now) as of May 29, 2025 as the Senate ultimately missed a key deadline for a vote on the bill.  But we must not rest in our laurels just yet, though.  Unfortunately, another bill passed, and was signed into law, that requires app stores to verify age and parental consent for people under 18 to download apps, which takes effect on January 1, 2026 if it doesn't get struck down by the courts in the meantime.  Even if that one is not quite as bad.

Texas' Potential Social Media Ban Strictest In The History Of The World

The latest bill in Texas to restrict social media for young people is the strictest one in the history of the world thus far.  This bill as currently written, which passed the House and is now heading to the Senate, would absolutely ban anyone under 18 from using social media platforms, period.  And anyone signing up for a new social media account would face mandatory age verification, with the exact details on how that would work still not quite cut and dried yet, but most likely would involve some flavor of uploading or otherwise entering government-issued IDs, perhaps via third party services.  What that means for existing accounts remains to be determined, but parents would have the right to force social media companies to summarily and permanently delete their under-18 kids' accounts upon request.  And there are NO exceptions to what counts as "social media" as long one can create and share content on a website or app, except for news and sports websites.  

That would mean that in Texas, a 16 or 17 year old would be legally old enough to get married, but yet still somehow too young to post their wedding on Facebook, or any other social media for that matter.  Let that sink in for a moment.

(Suddenly, Florida's less extreme law, with its lower and graduated 14/16 age limit, and more, if unclear, exceptions, looks almost....quaint and nostalgic by comparison.)

Our vehement opposition to this abomination of a bill is twofold:  1) this bill blatantly violates the First Amendment rights of people under 18, and 2) it also creates a potentially massive privacy and cybersecurity risk for ALL ages due to the mandatory age verification, assuming government-issued IDs or other sensitive personal information is required.  It is grossly overbroad, unconstitutional, illiberal, and unethical.  And NO amount of lipstick can save this pig.

The ONE good thing about this bill is that it will require all ID and personal data used for age verification purposes to be used only for that specific purpose and deleted immediately afterwards, unlike some other bills out there.  Thank God (or Nature) for small mercies, right?  But honestly, can we really trust Big Tech with something like that?  I think we all know the answer to that question.

And don't even for a minute think that it will stop there!  We have all seen some flavor of this movie before, and it doesn't end well.  It certainly will NOT stop at 18, mark my words.  If it passes this year, and other states and the feds subsequently join them, then it is almost certain that it will be raised to 21 nationwide by 2030, if not sooner.  Just look at alcohol and tobacco, for example, which the bill's proponents are already comparing social media to.  Whether they make a beeline for 21 as soon as next year, or perhaps take the scenic route via 19 first (to "get it out of the high schools"), still remains to be determined, but they WILL get there one way another unless they are stopped NOW.  (Other countries will at least probably stop at 18, but almost certainly NOT the USA if the zealots succeed.)  

And don't think it will stop at "merely" verifying age either.  This can VERY easily lead to an Orwellian nightmare where all privacy and any semblance of anonymity is a thing of the past, and political dissidents are targeted by the state for voicing their opinions on any controversial issues.  And it goes further downhill from there as well.  

Don't say you haven't been warned!  While this particular bill is a primarily Republican effort, it has bipartisan support, just like all other tyranny against young people.

If they really wanted to keep young people safe online (and adults too!), they would do the following:

• Pass comprehensive data privacy legislation for ALL ages which, at a minimum, would ban any and all "surveillance advertising" and "dark patterns".  This is best done at the federal level in terms of effectiveness, but states can serve as important trailblazers nonetheless.
• Regulate the algorithms better, audit them, and ban "addictive design features" for ALL ages.
• Perhaps even tax the data mining of users by social media companies.
• Have a voluntary smartphone buyback program like they do for guns.
• Since the latest trend towards "bell to bell" phone-free schools is basically a foregone conclusion at this point, they should apply it to everyone (teachers, staff, administrators, and visitors), not just students.
• If after doing all of that we absolutely MUST set an "age of digital majority", then it should be no higher than 16 (ideally no higher than 15, but certainly NO higher than 16, EVER!), and it should be a "soft" age limit with plenty of generous exceptions, and NO mandatory age verification involving any sensitive personal information whatsoever, period.
• And if after all of that, they still insist on mandatory age verification, then they need to have a billion-dollar guarantee that such information will never fall into the wrong hands, and delay implementation of that requirement until that can be guaranteed.  That is, if a person's sensitive information is retained, compromised, or misused in any way, shape or form, that person should be entitled to at least one billion dollars in damages.  But Big Tech would NEVER agree to that, of course.  And that is by design.

And perhaps even do a "safety recall" of various social media platforms, freezing or quarantining them for ALL ages until the platforms are made reasonably safer.

But this sort of ageist and Orwellian bill, or even the milder versions which are either passed or pending in other states, need to be rejected completely, and yesterday, full stop.

(Mic drop)

P.S.  If what the social mediaphobes say is true in that the Big Tech platforms "already know more about their users than the users know about themselves", then mandatory age verification is completely unnecessary for enforcing any sort of hypothetical age limit or age-specific restrictions.  Simply holding them to an "actual knowledge" (as in COPPA) or "knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances" (as in COPPA 2.0) standard, and auditing their existing treasure trove of user data (including their own age estimates) to keep them honest, is all that would be needed.  The zealots really can't have it both ways!

P.P.S.  The fact that the author of the bill is a fellow Elder Millennial like me really does NOT reflect very well at all on what our generation has become!  Pulling up the drawbridge for younger generations just like our Boomer parents did, the apple really did NOT fall far from the tree!

UPDATE:  The Texas social media ban is now dead (for now) as of May 29, 2025 as the Senate ultimately missed a key deadline for a vote on the bill.  Unfortunately, another bill passed, and was signed into law, that requires app stores to verify age and parental consent for people under 18 to download apps, which takes effect on January 1, 2026 if it doesn't get struck down by the courts in the meantime.

What Will 2025 Bring for Youth Rights?

It's 2025 now, and things look pretty bleak for youth rights in general.  Not only is the 21 drinking age (and smoking age and toking age) not going away anytime soon, but now we have to deal with the latest social media bans and restrictions on young people.  Florida's literally goes into effect today, for example.  This law bans anyone under 14 from signing up for or maintaining a social media account at all, and for anyone over 14 but under 16 from doing so without verified parental consent.  How they plan to do it without it backfiring on older youth and adults is not clear, but either way, it is very wrong-headed at best.  And we know it won't stop there, as it won't be long before it gets raised to 18 and then 19 and then 21 and so on.  That is, slopes are MUCH, MUCH slipperier than they appear!

Fortunately, it is being challenged in court, and pending the outcome of such challenges, enforcement is unlikely to begin until at least February at the earliest.

And then of course we have Trump coming back into the office of POTUS for a second term on January 20th.  That alone will be a new dark age for America, especially with his puppet master Elon Muskrat pulling his strings.  Trump has not exactly been a friend of youth rights, as evident in his raising the federal smoking age to 21 in late 2019.  Just like DeSanctimonious did the same for Florida in 2021, after initially opposing it.  And of course, Trump and MAGA Republicans and Talibangelicals seeking to systematically revoke women's rights will of course not bode well for youth rights either, if history is any indication.

So buckle up, as it will be a VERY wild ride!

The View From 2030 (At The Latest)

At the rate things are going these days, the following is a very likely conversation that will happen many times over in 2030, at the latest.  At least in the USA:

18 Year Old: "I'm an adult now.  Why am I still not allowed to go on social media or have a smartphone?"

Parent:  "Because the law now forbids both until you are 21, and the law is the law."

18 Year Old:  "But Canadian, Australian, British, and European people my age are allowed to.  As are people my age in almost every other country as well."

Parent:  "Well, we're not Canada, Australia, Europe, or any other country for that matter.  Different cultures and such.  America has too many problems as it is."

18 Year Old:  "But your generation was allowed to at a much earlier age than me!"

Parent:  "That was then.  Life was cheap back then.  We know better now.  And your grandparents were allowed to drink and smoke too at your age, which we obviously no longer allow either, so your point is?"

18 Year Old:  "And they were allowed to play outside with their friends unsupervised even when they were in single digits too, or so I have heard.  Grandma and Grandpa actually got to enjoy the real world before they forgot how to, while you got to enjoy the virtual world at least.  My generation had neither."

Parent:  "Well, the real world was much safer back then compared to now, and as for me, we didn't know just how dangerous the virtual world really was."

18 Year Old:  "Statistics say otherwise".

Parent:  "You need to watch more news and true crime documentaries before you can argue statistics.  It's really a jungle out there now. In any case, I see your statistics, and I raise you a "Because I said so!""

18 Year Old: "Statistics beat logical fallacies and anecdotes every time.  Regardless, it's not fair in what is supposed to be a free country."

Parent:  "Life isn't fair.  Deal with it!"

18 Year Old:  "But I'm literally old enough to get married, and yet I can't even post my own wedding on Facebook?  That doesn't make any sense at all."

Parent:  "If you're so mature and such an adult, then why don't you get married right now?" (Tries to trick the young person into saying they are "too young".)

18 Year Old:  "Because as an adult, I know that just because you CAN do something, it doesn't mean that you SHOULD.  Just like you raised me".

Parent:  (speechless)

18 Year Old:  (Mic drop)