‘Losing the fight’: Parents urge action as Indiana House revisits youth social media restrictions

This story was originally published by the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

After hours of emotional testimony from frustrated parents and school leaders, an Indiana House committee is weighing whether to revive youth social media restrictions inside a wide-ranging education agency bill.

This time, however, lawmakers are considering a model aimed at parental consent and data regulation — with more onus on social media companies — rather than an outright youth social media ban that senators stripped from the bill earlier this session.

Senate Bill 199, an Indiana Department of Education bill authored by Sen. Jeff Raatz, R-Richmond, was discussed for several hours Monday in the House Education Committee, with much of the debate dominated by a proposed amendment to impose new guardrails on social media platforms used by Hoosier children.

A proposed amendment would add new language to require parental consent for children under 16 to create or maintain accounts; limit practices related to the collection, use and retention of data from Hoosier minors; and curb what many on Monday called “addictive algorithms” for accounts used by children 15 and younger.

House Education Chairman Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, placed the bill on the committee’s Wednesday calendar and said lawmakers are expected to take amendments and vote on whether to advance it to the full House.

“This bill looks at social media a little bit differently,” Behning told the committee. “We know (social media) has a huge impact on student learning. We also know that it’s almost as addictive as alcohol and a number of things — that dopamine is released — and how it’s a continued, addictive behavior that kids get sucked into.”

Parental Consent, Platform Limits

Earlier versions of SB 199 included a prohibition on social media use for children, but lawmakers ultimately stripped that language on the Senate floor amid legal, enforcement and parental-rights concerns.

The House proposal instead regulates how platforms interact with minors and their families, placing new legal obligations on companies rather than barring access outright.

Under the pending amendment, social media providers would be required to use age estimation to identify Indiana users who are 15 or younger and obtain verifiable parental consent before allowing those accounts to continue. Behning said social media companies are able to determine a user’s age “within a very short period of time” and “with high level of accuracy.”

The consent process could include identity verification, payment credentials or other widely used confirmation tools designed to ensure an adult is authorizing the account.

Parents would be offered monitoring tools and, in some cases, a separate password for the account.

The amendment’s language also restricts how companies can use and retain parental consent information, prohibiting platforms from selling that information or using it for advertising, marketing or unrelated data collection, and authorizes enforcement by the Indiana attorney general under the state’s consumer protection laws.

The amendment would additionally prohibit social media companies from deploying certain algorithms on accounts used by younger children and bar the sale or exploitation of Hoosier children’s data.

“We’re trying to say that Hoosier kids’ data is not available for sale — that their data belongs to them, not to marketers,” Behning said. “When you start using social media frequently, you will see where you maybe click on cats, and then all of a sudden you’ll see more and more and more cat videos with the intent of really getting students and kids more addicted to this algorithm.”

The amendment largely mirrors language adopted in other states, including Florida, which supporters noted has withstood early court challenges.

The push follows a separate effort during the 2025 legislative session, when lawmakers advanced a youth social media ban through the Senate only for it to stall without a hearing in the House.

‘We Are Losing the Fight To Protect Our Children’

Joann Bogard, a parent from Wadesville, told lawmakers her 15-year-old son, Mason, died in 2019 after attempting a viral social media trend — a “choking challenge” — that was pushed to him by an algorithm on YouTube.

“I was the parent who was engaged and followed all of the expert guidelines to protect my son. I had safeguards turned on. I checked his devices. We had hard conversations,” Bogard said. “I thought I had everything covered, but that wasn’t enough to fight the algorithms, which are intentionally designed to capture the attention, manipulate behavior and keep young users online for as long as possible.”

“This isn’t a parenting failure,” she continued. “It’s the result of deliberate choices from big tech.”

Beau Buzbee, whose daughter Hailey was killed after being lured online by a predator, urged lawmakers not to let the moment pass.

“We are in the midst of the greatest crisis of our time. We are losing the fight to protect our children,” Buzbee said. “The internet and social media are the devil’s and predators’ playgrounds, and it’s on this front that we must fight.”

Buzbee’s testimony came amid broader Statehouse discussions on Monday sparked by the Fishers teen’s disappearance and death. State and legislative leaders said Hailey’s “tragic” death exposed gaps in how Indiana law addresses online grooming and child safety.

Hailey Buzbee, a 17-year-old Hamilton Southeastern High School student, left home in early January and was missing for nearly a month before police announced they believed she was dead. 

Authorities allege she had been communicating online for more than a year with a 39-year-old man now charged in Ohio with child sexual exploitation-related offenses and evidence tampering connected to the investigation.

“This is a different world, and one that we’re all adapting to,” said House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers. “I think we’re in a world where this is always going to be looked at every session.”

Lawmakers representing the Fishers area said Monday they’re now pushing for proposals aimed at closing those gaps — including the revival of modified social media language within Senate Bill 199, as well as separate changes to Indiana’s emergency alert system.

Gov. Mike Braun and Buzbee’s family have also advocated for a so-called “Pink Alert” to address cases involving grooming or coercion that fall outside existing Amber Alert criteria.

Educators echoed those concerns, describing how online conflicts routinely spill into classrooms.

“For today’s students, social media is not separate from school culture. It is an extension of it,” said Jeff Butts, executive director of the Indiana Association of School Principals. “We’re constantly dealing with conflicts, harassment, emotional crises that probably began on Snapchat about 11 o’clock the night before — and by the time the first bell rings, the damage is already done.”

South Bend high school student Rima Bahradine-Bell told lawmakers she wishes she had not been exposed to social media at such a young age.

“I would have liked to not have any social media at that age,” she said, describing how online “comparison” and “pressure” followed her well beyond her exposure to such platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some lawmakers raised questions about whether the amendment goes far enough and asked if it should apply to children older than 15. Others questioned how parental consent and age verification would work in practice.

Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, cautioned that lawmakers need to balance urgency with enforceability.

“We’re not teaching these children to love each other, to respect each other. We’re not taking time to deal with some of these things that impact behavior. And until we get to the root of the cause — where people have some compassion and some sympathy and some empathy for others — I’m not so sure we’re going to solve this problem,” Smith said. “We’ve got to get into the spiritual realm.”

Behning and other supporters said the structure is intended to keep educators focused on instruction, while placing legal accountability on social media companies and the attorney general’s office.

“I don’t know that we can control bad behavior,” he said. “In regards to whether or not it fixes all the ills that we would love to address, I guarantee it does not. And in terms of cyberbullying, et cetera, there are limits to what we can do in terms of free speech, and we’re not trying to eliminate the child’s ability. We’re just trying to protect our kids and keep the data from being sold to companies for the benefit of marketing.”

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