Is social media on its way to court? Two lawsuits have been filed by parents, claiming Instagram and Snapchat contributed to severe anxiety in young people, and in one case, the death of a young girl.
Legal analysts told NBC Bay Area Thursday that these cases could set precedents if they get to court. Precedents set when it comes to responsibility, both how responsible parents are for their children, but also how responsible social media companies are for the content on their sites, and how that content gets passed around.
In the case of Tammy Rodriguez of Connecticut came to a tragic end, her 11-year old daughter Selena committed suicide after Rodriguez said, she developed an addiction to Instagram and Snapchat.
Mathew Bergman, founder of the ‘Social Media Victims Law Center,’ is handling Rodriguez’s case, along with that of Brittney Doffing of Oregon, who said her 14 year old developed an eating disorder and ran away from home several times after being harassed on Instagram and Snapchat.
“They’ll see that a person is a 14-year-old girl, so they’ll direct them to influencers, who will in turn direct them to sites that cause them to feel bad about their bodies, and result in serious eating disorders,” he said.
Meta And Snap have been in the news for concerns like these but a courtroom? Legal Analyst Aron Solomon said he thinks there’s a good chance.
“I do think that cases like this give courts an opportunity to remind both social media companies and parents of their individual and joint responsibilities,” he said.
An attempt to reign in social media companies the likes we haven’t seen since the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
“So ,by saying that these applications, whether it’s Snap or Meta or Twitter or anything else, are so inherently dangerous, that even with parental control and supervision their child ended up dying from suicide is going to be a very difficult stretch in the courtroom,” Solomon said.
Snapchat is not commenting on the case, but has said it’s devastated by Selina’s death. NBC Bay Area also reached out to Meta but have not heard back.
Source: NBC Bay Area
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