Commentary: Empowering parents or protecting predators?

Below is a data-driven op-ed from Dr. Addie Angelov urging lawmakers to finish social media legislation this session. It foregrounds peer-reviewed research, national surveillance data, and Indiana-specific law enforcement statistics, and it explicitly acknowledges that the first version will not be perfect.

In my role as an independent researcher with federally approved access to highly confidential and protected data on youth, I tend to see issues and trends in child wellness before most. Since 2009, I have been watching trends in Hoosier children’s health and education data to better understand how to support academic achievement. From my vantage point, the impact of social media on our kids started to become noticeable in 2018. Over the last 8 years the trends have only gotten more devastating and documented. Not passing legislation that empowers parents with the right to consent and monitor their child’s social media activity, in this session, will leave Indiana families defenseless to protect their children and embolden predators.

With the passage of the Let the Kids be Kids Act, the General Assembly has recognized children’s age-appropriate independence in the physical world. With Bell-to-Bell legislation, we have addressed the greatest access point outside of parental oversight, schools. The final step is to establish age-appropriate guardrails in the digital world: require parental consent, require parental credentials, prohibit behavioral surveillance of minors, and minimize the retention and sale of children’s data. Together, these measures align with what parents and professionals from healthcare, education, and law enforcement repeatedly asked for in testimony: tools, not bans, and accountability for the companies that design these products.

Indiana law enforcement has been directed that social media is the venue through which we are seeing stark increases in child predator activity in Indiana. They also share that social media organizations are often difficult to work with when protecting Indiana children from predators, even ignoring court orders. Indiana’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force logged 29,635 cyber tips in 2025 (a 38% increase from last year), made 499 arrests, and rescued 126 children—but offenders increasingly use VPNs and “privacy apps” to evade detection. Platforms must be part of the solution—cooperating with lawful orders and building products that do not rely on tracking minors’ data to drive engagement.

Indiana has long used age-based rules to keep kids safe—car seats, graduated driving, and school day phone policies are all examples that have widespread support by professionals and parents alike. Extending that logic to social media accounts is not prohibition; it’s parental permission and baseline safety. According to the Indiana Attorney General’s Parents Bill of Rights, parents have the right to direct the upbringing and education of their child in the manner they see fit. Generally, minors cannot enter into legal and binding contracts without the consent of their parents. If families give consent for their children to have a debit card or cell phone, parents have administrative control of the accounts to teach their children how to be responsible and ensure safety. Parents can log in to their children’s accounts and check their usage to have informed conversations with their children. Indiana parents currently do not have this type of access or the right to log in to their children’s social media accounts to teach them about healthy social media engagement.

In the case of child predators or other physical dangers to children, parents should be empowered to stand their ground. If a predator knocks on the front door of a Hoosier home, families have the right to stand their ground and protect their children. If a predator approaches a child in Indiana via social media, families don’t even have the right or, often, the means to stop the communication or get their digital activity after a child has been harmed.

When it comes to social media, I am a mom in the arena. I have 13- and 7-year-old daughters. Social media has been an ongoing issue at my own dinner table for years. In many ways the conversations in my own home are just like those in some policy discussions; fluid, tedious, and heated. I offer the top five pieces of peer-reviewed research that drive my own decision-making for your consideration as you decide whether or not to empower Hoosier parents:

The average age a girl is approached for sexually explicit photos of herself or offered pornography online is 8 years old.
The greater the distance away from the device, the higher the GPA.
Social media use causes a decline in alpha brainwaves and increases in beta and gamma brain activity which is the same brain pattern as addiction to illegal substances.
Watching short term videos and reels reduces theta brainwaves in the frontal cortex which results in an inability to focus or control impulses.
Between the ages of 10-12, oxytocin and dopamine (happy hormones) receptors in the brain begin multiplying at rapid and unpredictable rates, making them less likely to control their instinctual responses to social media stimuli.

The platforms and other opponents warn of litigation, edge cases, and scope disputes. They are right: no leading safety statute is perfect. But waiting for a loopholeproof omnibus is effectively a vote to keep the current default—children unverified, unconsented, and fully exposed for another year.

Legislatures routinely pass version1 frameworks and iterate based on implementation experience and court guidance. That is how we improved child carseat standards, tobacco controls, and childdata privacy. The alternative—doing nothing—means another 14+ months of parents being limited from reigning in:

4–5 hours/day average socialmedia exposure for teens;
elevated risk for depression/anxiety and disrupted sleep;
algorithmic amplification of rabbit holes;
and rising predator activity documented by both Indiana ICAC and NCMEC.

What “finishing the job” looks like this session

At minimum, Indiana should enact law that:

Requires age assurance and parental consent before platforms create or maintain accounts for minors, consistent with federal benchmarks.
Provides a separate parent credential with authority to set daily/weekly limits, sleepmode hours, content/feature defaults, and to see linked accounts.
Sets safetybydefault for minors—disable infinite scroll, autoplay, public DMs, and public searchability for unlinked accounts unless a parent opts in.
Restricts data practices for minors (no behavioral profiling to drive engagement) and requires cooperation with lawful orders in childexploitation cases.
Establishes clear, narrow definitions and goodfaith safe harbors, inviting technical working groups to bring back refinements next session. (For scope concerns around gaming/UGC, ask the Legislative Council to assign an interim study committee to propose definitional clarifications without gutting youth protections.)

Juvenile brains are not developing on legislative time. Predators don’t keep banking hours. Every procedural delay and inaction is measured not in amendments but in children: more who open hidden accounts, more who slide into algorithmic spirals at 1:00 a.m., more who receive first contact from a predator while parents have no legal right to see or stop it. Indiana has already recognized age-appropriate independence in the physical world and school-day phone discipline. The digital piece is overdue.

Pass law to empower parents now even if it’s not perfect. Commit—publicly—to tighten it next year. Let’s lead in research about its efficacy and have an informed conversation next session to make it better. Let this be the session remembered for the starting point for empowering parents in the digital world, not for protecting predators.