AUSTIN, Texas — A new bill aims to provide parents greater control over their children’s social media activity, although there are limits in light of legal action.
The Texas Legislature passed House Bill 18, known as the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act.
“HB 18 is the most comprehensive kids online safety parent empowerment bill in the nation. It gave parents more tools and control over their kids’ access to digital devices. Things like how much time they’re spending on it and enabling the strongest privacy settings,” said Zach Whiting, policy director with the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “One of the important pieces of the bill as well is that it created a duty on platforms to take reasonable steps to limit access to harmful content, violence, pornographic content. That’s a very important step.”
Whiting says a federal district judge blocked that specific part of the legislation dealing with filtering of so-called harmful content for minors.
Aligning with the provisions of HB 18, Facebook and Instagram implemented tools for parents who can modify their children’s account settings and set limits.
Whiting believes a more effective bill would include language requiring parental consent for children to create and access social media accounts.
“Like cigarettes, like alcohol, like gambling where there is a role for the state in placing age limits to those kinds of things,” Whiting said.
Across Texas, there’ve been reports of numerous school shooting threats in recent weeks and months.
One of the latest incidents happened in Kerrville where a 10-year-old was arrested and charged with terroristic threats.
Kerrville police received numerous reports about social media posts targeting Hal Peterson Middle School. Working with Kerrville ISD, investigators were able to discover that a minor who attends the district, allegedly posted these social media threats “with the intent of causing alarm or panic.” Authorities stressed there was no valid threat.
Law enforcement in Hays County recently arrested at least five juveniles within a two-week span over online threats directed at schools.
Whiting said HB 18 has the potential to reduce such activity, but it comes down to parents and adults speaking with youth about the consequences of posting threats on the internet. He acknowledged adults can't monitor what children do online all the time.
“It’s a big step for police to step in and arrest kids that age. But it does hopefully send a message that this type of behavior it cannot be allowed in school," said Whiting.