Indiana youth social media crackdown under House Bill 1408 advances to governor’s desk

A push to rein in youth social media — renewed in part by recent high-profile online exploitation cases — culminated on the last day of Indiana’s legislative session after the lawmakers in both chambers agreed on final language and sent the bill to Gov. Mike Braun.

A final bipartisan Friday vote in the Senate capped a monthslong scramble that spanned multiple bills, and social media language once declared dead was ultimately revived and folded into a broader education bill.

The final draft of House Bill 1408, authored by Rep. Jake Teshka, R-North Liberty, clears the way for parental-consent requirements, age-verification mandates and algorithm limits for certain social media platforms used by Hoosiers under 16.

The social media provisions did not originate in that bill, however. Language was first introduced this session in Senate Bill 199, penned by Sen. Jeff Raatz, R-Richmond, but was later stripped out by the Senate.

After more back and forth, the restrictions finally landed in House Bill 1408 as part of a negotiated end-of-session compromise.

“This is an epidemic across our nation,” Raatz said during the final Senate debate Friday. “Everybody in this room, I don’t think, can deny that that’s exactly what is going on. The question is, what can we do? This is one of the things that we absolutely can do.”

This was lawmakers’ second consecutive attempt to regulate youth access to social media after a broader proposal failed to pass in 2025. This session, the General Assembly took a narrower approach focused on parental consent, age estimation and social media platform design features.

Urgency was amplified this month following the death of Fishers teenager Hailey Buzbee, who authorities say was killed after being lured online by a predator. Braun and legislative leaders have repeatedly pointed to rising online exploitation cases as justification for tightening controls.

“I’m asking you to help protect our young children,” Raatz said. “The most vulnerable are our kids under 16 years of age… We have an obligation to protect those who are vulnerable the same way we do with driver’s licenses, the same way we do with alcohol.”

What the bill does

The House approved the conference committee report unanimously, 93-0, on Thursday. The Senate followed Friday with a 49-1 passage, with a single no vote from Sen. Jean Leising, R-Oldenburg.

In the final bill, social media providers meeting specific criteria must obtain “verifiable parental consent” before allowing an Indiana resident under 16 to create an account.

The restrictions apply only to platforms that:

• generate at least $1 billion in annual global revenue;
  
• rely on algorithm-driven content recommendations;
  
• include so-called addictive features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay video or visible engagement metrics;
• and have a substantial share of under-16 users who spend an average of two hours or more per day on the platform.

If a provider determines — using what the bill calls “commercially reasonable means” — that a user is an Indiana resident under 16, it may create an account only after receiving parental consent consistent with federal children’s privacy rules.

For accounts held by adolescents, platforms must also disable or block a range of features, including: algorithm-based content recommendations and targeted advertising; direct messaging from unlinked accounts; search visibility to users outside a child’s approved network; and the addictive design features enumerated in statute.

Parents who grant consent must be given the option to receive a separate password that allows them to monitor usage, set daily or weekly time limits, restrict access by time of day and access the account at any time.

The bill further requires continuing age estimation, which triggers additional verification after users cross specific usage thresholds — beginning at 25 hours over six months and increasing at higher usage levels. Accounts that fail to verify age or obtain parental consent after notice must be terminated.

Enforcement would fall to the Indiana attorney general, with violations treated as deceptive acts under state consumer-protection law.

Is Snapchat covered?

Lawmakers specifically debated whether the bill would apply to Snapchat. Democrats, in particular, raised repeated questions about the platform, citing testimony earlier this session from parents, educators and child-safety advocates who warned that Snapchat is among the platforms most frequently linked to bullying, sextortion and online exploitation involving younger Hoosiers.

But there was no definitive answer about the app.

The bill defines covered platforms broadly but explicitly excludes services whose exclusive function is private, direct messaging. Democrats worried that carve-out could allow certain platforms — like Snapchat — to argue they fall outside the law, depending on how courts interpret “exclusive function.”

During a Senate Rules Committee meeting on Thursday, Sen. Andrea Hunley, D-Indianapolis, pressed Raatz on whether Snapchat was captured by the latest bill language.

Raatz noted that coverage hinges on the revenue threshold — at least a billion dollars in annual revenue — not platform names, and whether a platform employs algorithms and addictive elements.

“I will never mention the organizations that are affected by this,” Raatz said. “There’s a threshold, I didn’t look, I don’t want to know.”

Sen. Chris Garten, R-Charlestown, said he believed the bill would cover the vast majority of platforms used by Indiana youth and argued that Snapchat would likely meet the threshold if it was not otherwise carved out.

“I just looked it up, and as I suspected, I don’t know if Snapchat’s tied up in anything else,” he said Thursday. “But I do know they have about $6 billion in revenue.”

Debate resurfaced later during a lengthy back-and-forth between Sen. J.D. Ford, D-Indianapolis, and Raatz on the Senate floor on Friday.

Ford called Snapchat “one of the most egregious social media platforms” and warned that young users often misunderstand how long content is stored and how easily it can be weaponized for bullying or exploitation.

“A lot of our students think it snaps and then goes away,” Ford said. “They don’t understand that it’s stored on servers for a long time… and there’s a lot of bullying that happens on Snapchat.”

Age limits and bipartisan negotiations

As the bill moved between chambers, lawmakers also debated how young was too young to access social media — and where to draw the parental-consent line.

The final version applies to Hoosiers under 16.

That age cutoff drew repeated discussion throughout the session. Many who testified before lawmakers had cited concerns about brain development, mental health, suicide risk and online predators targeting middle-school-aged users, in particular.

Although Rep. Ed DeLaney, D-Indianapolis, framed the final product as imperfect, he called it a starting point for addressing “concerns” many, including himself, have about social media.

“I don’t want to deceive anybody: there’s going to be a lot of litigation, a lot of difficulties, a lot of technology behind this, and questions about whether these companies will be able or willing to do some of the things we would require of them,” DeLaney said. “Those are all things that are up in the air.”

“But we’ve managed to find a bill that is not terrible — it’s actually something good. We’re moving in the right direction,” he continued. “I think this is a good chance for us to lead on addressing the issue of social media overload.”