Texas Mom Is Pushing Congress To Pass Kids Online Safety Bill After Daughter Experienced Racists Attacks at 13

LaQuanta Hernandez wants to ensure that no child ever experiences what he went through when he was just 13 years old. She is lobbying Congress to pass the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).

She says her daughter, Jazmine, had to go through therapy after boys at the middle school she attended at the time created and posted racist photos of her on Instagram and TikTok.

“I’m thankful that my daughter didn’t commit suicide , but one of the things that the counselor said was that if she did not have the support she had … the counseling, [and] supportive family behind her … it could have happened,”  she told Here and Now.

Hernandez said it all started when a picture of Jazmine circulating on TikTok with her classmates and volleyball team was captioned, “The only Black b***h in school.”

Her parents reported the post to TikTok and the school, and it was eventually taken down. Weeks later, more racist photos started to reappear on Instagram.

“It was a picture of her, and it said the name of her middle school and then the N-word,” Hernandez told the radio outlet about some of the images. “It consisted of her face superimposed on someone burning on a cross with the KKK lined up behind her with the caption, ‘gorilla pack.’ There was another similar picture with her face superimposed on a burning cross with the Caption, ‘filthy monkey burning.’

Jazmine’s dad works in law enforcement, and her mother works in school district administration. Hernandez says they had safeguards in place, such as not allowing her child on social media, yet she was still affected.

Jazmine is now 16 years old, and her mother still fights for her and her children’s safety online.

Hernandez has been traveling to Washington, D.C., with the advocacy group Parents Together to lobby Congress to pass the KOSA. The Senate passed the bill in July with bipartisan support, and it is now in the House.

The bill, which President Joe Biden said he would sign if passed, would require online platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent and mitigate harm to children, provide safeguards for minors, and require that social media platforms offer tools for parents to supervise their children.

“If you can imagine a 13-year-old girl having to go through that, it was traumatic,” says Hernandez. “I’m very hopeful. I’m expecting change to happen [because] the failure to act has real human consequences.”