State Rep. Jared Patterson writes about the effects social media has on children and his recently filed House Bill 186, which prevents social media companies...
Representatives from social media companies such as Meta — which owns Facebook and Instagram — as well as TikTok, Snap and X declined to testify at a recent joint committee hearing at the Texas Capitol. "I can say without reservation that tech companies like Snapchat, X and Meta are contributing to the rise in anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, porn addiction and suicide of Texas’ youth," writes Texas state Rep. Jared Patterson.
However, while Hollywood conditioned us to see humanoid robots as the enemy, programmers were hard at work on tools that would divide, harm and even kill from within. As scary as Arnold Schwarzenegger was in, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Snap’s Evan Spiegel, and other social media executives managed to develop tools that are destroying our children and rendering parents powerless in their efforts to protect their children.
And the reason is very simple and sobering: Each and every session, these multinational, trillion-dollar companies come before the Texas House and Senate with the same testimony that they are “working tirelessly to better protect children and empower parents.” And I mean the same testimony — these Big Tech trade associations have copied and pasted thesame testimony and used them in different hearings in response to tragedies throughout the years.
In the hearing addressing the concerns of the effects of social media on minors, a shocking statistic came to light that 88% of lifelong smokers became addicted due to their use before the age of 18, according to Dr. Lindy McGee, from Texas Children’s Hospital. In July 2024, the U.S. surgeon general compared social media to the. We, as legislators, cannot allow our children to become permanently addicted to these platforms when they continue to harm or, in the worst cases, kill today’s youth.
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