A lawmaker in North Texas has proposed a bill that would prohibit Texas children from using social media.
Jared Patterson, a Texas Republican State Rep., has proposed HB 896. This bill states that a person would have to be 18 or older to create a social media account.
Although there aren’t any methods to validate a person’s identity on their sites, social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, require a person to be 13 years of age.
Patterson’s bill would mean that social media platforms will have to implement a system to confirm a person’s identity. This would be done through photo i.d. verification and also granting parents the right to shut down their child’s account.
A Wall Street Journal has shown that social media usage has a mental-health impact on teens. 40% of them stated that they post on social media to impress others. At the same time, 30% of girls believed that Instagram makes them feel insecure about their body.
Medical experts in the U.S. continue to warn the public of how a person can become addicted to social media. This is more so the case for children who may face cyberbullying on the platforms and possible exposure to sexual predators, as well.
