Instagram, Snapchat sued in death of 11-year-old Conn. girl
A Connecticut woman has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Snapchat and Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, claiming the social media giants did not do enough to protect her daughter from “harmful and exploitative content” before her suicide.
The 11-year-old died last July after struggling for two years with “extreme addiction” to Instagram and Snapchat, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco. The mother’s suit was brought by the Social Media Victims Law Center, a group founded last year seeking to hold social media companies accountable.
Hearst Connecticut Media Group is withholding the family’s name because girl was a minor.
“This isn’t a question of opinion. Internal documents and testimony before Congress by a former employee reveal that Meta Platforms was fully aware
of the flaws and addictive properties of its social media platforms and failed to adequately design their products to protect minor users from harm,” Matthew Bergman, the center’s founder and an attorney representing the mother in
the suit, said in a statement.
In his statement, Bergman said “no safeguards are in place on Snapchat,” and the girl’s death “is a direct result of the inaction and deliberate addictive design of these social media
platforms to prey on vulnerable children.”
Meta did not immediately respond Friday to a message seeking comment.
A spokesperson for Snapchat said in a statement the company was “devastated” by the news of the girl’s death, and “our hearts go out to her family.”
“While we can’t comment on the specifics of active litigation, nothing is more important to us than the wellbeing of our community,” the company’s statement said. The spokesperson also highlighted that the app does not include “some of the public pressure and social comparison features of traditional social media platforms,” and “intentionally” makes it harder for strangers to connect with young users.
“We work closely with many mental health organizations to provide in-app tools and resources for Snapchatters as part of our ongoing work to keep our community safe,” the spokesperson said.
The suit comes as social media companies have faced renewed scrutiny into their practices by lawmakers, after internal documents from Facebook were leaked by a former employee and reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The Connecticut mother’s complaint asks for damages to be specified in a jury trial. It also requests a court order against the two social media companies “to stop the harmful conduct alleged herein,” and “remedy the unreasonably dangerous algorithms in their social media products.”
The lawsuit also asks for the courts to order the companies to “provide warnings to minor users and their parents that defendants’ social media products are addictive and pose a clear and present danger to unsuspecting minors.”
The suit also claims the apps “do not permit parental controls,” limiting the mother’s ability to monitor her daughter’s social media use and causing her to “physically confiscate” the girl’s devices. According to the lawsuit, this caused the girl to “run away in order to access her social media accounts on other devices.”
In the months leading up to her death, the girl “was experiencing severe sleep deprivation that was caused and aggravated by her addiction to Instagram and Snapchat, and the constant 24-hour stream of notifications and alerts defendants sent,” the lawsuit stated.