By akademiotoelektronik, 17/05/2022

Mother accuses Snapchat and Instagram of causing suicide of her 11-year-old daughter

An American mother has filed a complaint against Snapchat and Instragram, accusing her of causing the suicide of her 11-year-old daughter, who is addicted to social media.

Last March, Instagram said it wanted to protect minors in the best possible way by introducing a new feature. But almost a year later, the social network of the group Meta (formerly Facebook) is the target of a complaint from a bereaved mother who accuses Instagram but also Snapchat of causing the suicide of her daughter. Tammy Rodriguez explains that the 11-year-old victim became sickly addicted to social media to the point of killing herself in July 2021. In her complaint, she explains that both platforms are "dangerous and defective social media products," says CBS News. She reports that the young Selena committed suicide after fighting "the harmful effects of social networks." According to a lawsuit filed in a federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday, these applications are designed to "exploit human psychology" through sophisticated algorithms and artificial intelligence.

Tammy Rodriguez claims that she tried to save her daughter, providing her with all the necessary medical assistance. But she ran away several times when her mother tried to take her connected devices. Tammy Rodriguez explained that she sent her daughter to therapy after which the doctor said "never seen a patient so severely addicted to social media." Before she killed herself, Selena had lost sleep. The coronavirus pandemic has only worsened the situation, causing an eating disorder in the girl. Selena has undergone several psychiatric treatments that have had no effect, with the pre-teenager even becoming increasingly physically and mentally violent towards her mother and siblings.

Social networks in focus

According to the "Hartford Courant", the complaint alleges that adult men succeeded in soliciting sexually explicit content from Selena. This content was then said to have been shared with classmates. The mother accuses Snapchat and Facebook of not having put in place safeguards that would have protected the 11-year-old from dangerous and abusive content. Both companies are also accused of failing to verify the age and identity of the minors or of having adequate parental control.

This case comes at a time when social networks face increasing scrutiny of their impact on young users. Last October, former product manager Facebook, Frances Haugen, told legislators that Facebook gave priority to profit rather than user safety. Meanwhile, in November, ten states launched an investigation into whether Meta had violated consumer protection laws by trying to attract children to its platforms, including Instagram. "Facebook, now Meta, failed to protect young people on its platforms and instead chose to ignore or, in some cases, double known manipulations that pose a real threat to physical and mental health with the aim of exploiting children for profit," wrote Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat, in a November statement.

"Instagram users must be at least 13 years old, and we have long been asking new members to indicate their age when registering. Although many Internet users are honest, we know that some young people can lie about their date of birth. We want to take more steps to avoid this problem, but checking the age of online people is a complex challenge facing many players in our industry, "Instagram wrote in March 2021, when announcing his new protection measures. "to prevent adults from sending unwanted messages to teenagers, we are launching a new feature that prohibits them from contacting people under the age of 18 who do not subscribe to their account," the platform added.

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