Texas’ Teens Face a Social Media Ban: A New Start or a Recipe for Destructive Isolation?

The Texas State Legislature has been dominated by the Republican Party for over a decade, with solid majorities in both houses. This has enabled it to rapidly take ideas from the so-called ‘Conservative Public Sphere’ and enact them into genuine policy in very short periods of time. In other words, when prominent Texas Republicans think out loud, it is not very long until many of those thoughts become law. Just this June, the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation called for a ‘Social Media Ban’ based on its own research. According to the Foundation, teens should be totally barred from using all platforms in this sphere until they are adults due to the immense harm they pose to young people. Within a few weeks, major Texas Republicans echoed this sentiment on social platforms like Twitter, with one, Representative James Patterson, going the furthest. He has pledged in the next session to introduce a bill aimed at shutting off social media access to all Texas teens in 2023. (Whiting 2022). In this short paper, we will try to consider what accounts for the enormous speed of radical policymaking. Do these aims go beyond mere protection and exceed the First Amendment rights of teens? How will such a ban be enforced? What are the potential complexities and impact of such a change on the lives of Texas teens?