A new law has gone into effect in Texas requiring parental approval for a child to create a social media account.
Parts of the SCOPE Act, or House Bill 18, went into effect Sunday after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the legislation last year.
At a committee hearing last year, Republican state Rep. Shelby Slawson cited the threats that unsupervised social media use could pose to children, including cyberbullying and child predators, according to Fox 4.
“A Texas teenager was rescued from a shed in North Carolina where she was being held by a predator who allegedly lured her using a chat app,” he said.
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A new law has gone into effect in Texas requiring parental approval for a child to create a social media account. (Getty Images)
However, the law in its current form would not directly target such contacts, Fox 4 reported.
Last week, a judge blocked provisions that would have required social media companies to filter out harmful content, but allowed for a requirement for parental consent for children to create an account and for parents' authority to monitor their children's online activities.
Some social media companies have argued that protections already exist to protect children online.
“While we fully agree with the underlying intent of the bill, we oppose the bill as presented,” Antigone Davis, a spokesperson for Meta, Facebook's parent company, told Fox 4.
Parts of the SCOPE Act, or House Bill 18, went into effect on Sunday. (Getty Images)
“We've developed over 30 tools to help young people stay safe and have a positive experience on our platform,” Davis added. “We have parental monitoring tools, set time limits, and the ability for parents to see who their child is following.”
At the same hearing last year, a Meta representative testified that Facebook and Instagram already have safeguards in place to protect children and that teen accounts use artificial intelligence to detect fake birth dates entered to create an account.
Meta also said it blocks ads targeting a variety of topics on its platforms.
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Some social media companies said there are already protections in place to protect children online. (Getty Images)
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Brian Dixon, a child psychiatrist with the Texas Medical Association, spoke at the hearing about what he has observed in his young patients regarding the impact of social media on their mental health.
“Now children have access to everything, at all times and without filters. They don't know when something is being advertised to them and when it isn't,” she said.
Courts have blocked similar laws passed in other states seeking to regulate young people's access to social media.
