Tammy Rodriguez, mother of an 11-year-old girl has sued the two social media companies Meta and Snap Inc in San Francisco federal court, alleging an addiction to their social media platforms caused the suicide of her young daughter.
Rodriguez claimed that her daughter Selena was apparently so addicted to Instagram and Snapchat that she suffered depression, eating disorders, and sleep deprivation, before eventually killing herself.
According to the lawsuit, filed on Thursday against the platforms’ respective parent companies, Meta (formerly Facebook) and Snap, the photo-sharing and messaging apps lack parental control and “seek to exploit users’ susceptibility.” As an alleged result, the girl had “struggled for more than two years with an extreme addiction” and then took her own life in July last year.
Selena was taken to a therapist, who told the girl’s mother that “she had never seen a patient as addicted to social media as Selena,” the lawsuit claims. News of the lawsuit was first reported by Bloomberg.
“There is a mental health epidemic among American teens,” attorney Matthew Bergman, founder of Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle, told Bloomberg. His company represents Tammy Rodriguez in the case.
The case is: Rodriguez v. Meta Platforms Inc. f/k/a Facebook Inc. 3:22-cv-00401, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francis
The attorney also filed a separate complaint this week, representing a mother in Oregon. “Numerous mental health conditions” of a 15-year-old are blamed on Snap and Meta.
“We are devastated to hear of Selena’s passing and our hearts go out to her family,” a Snap spokesperson said Friday in an emailed statement, according to Bloomberg. “While we can’t comment on the specifics of active litigation, nothing is more important to us than the wellbeing of our community, ” it added.
Meta and Snap knew or should have known that “their social media products were harmful to a significant percentage of their minor users,” the agency reports quoting Thursday’s lawsuit.
Meta representatives didn’t respond to an email seeking comment, Bloomberg says.
Last year Instagram had announced new measures aimed at protecting young users on its platform. Instagram’s CEO Adam Mosseri had appeared before US lawmakers to defend the app which US Senator Richard Blumenthal said had “toxic impacts”.
US states had last year announced a joint probe on Instagram’s parent company Meta for promoting the app for children despite allegedly knowing its potential harm.
The latest lawsuit against Meta and Snapchat comes after whistleblower Frances Haugen ex-employee at Facebook had alleged that the company prioritized profits over people’s safety.
Frances had asserted that Facebook should not be trusted to change its ways as she urged the lawmakers to curb the social media giant’s unlimited power on the net.
(With inputs from agencies)
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