NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. — There are more than 2,000 families pursuing lawsuits in more than 350 cases against TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Roblox and Meta.
These families claim that social media companies played a part in their child’s mental health, in many of those cases, leading to death.
Jennifer Mitchell is part of that group. She is suing Snapchat. The Pasco County mom claims that her son, 16-year-old son Ian Ezquerra, watched videos on Snapchat of Russian Roulette, which involves placing a single bullet in a revolver and spinning the chamber.
Mitchell said her son recorded himself attempting the dangerous game of chance. His father found him dead.
“It was a hard thing because I found these videos on Snapchat shortly after he had passed away,” Mitchell said.
Ian was an honor roll student and a member of the swim team at East Lake High School.
Matthew Bergman represents people like Jennifer Mitchell. He is the founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle.
“What's going on overall with social media is that they are designed with one goal and one goal entirely,” Bergman explained. “And that is to maximize the amount of time that young people spend online. That's how they make their money. When you’re on social media you are not the customer, you’re the product."
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Bergman says one solution is dealing with the algorithm.
“You can also turn down their algorithms, you could show kids what they want to see, not what they can't look away from,” he added. “Now, some kids are gonna look at bad stuff. You know, that's just a fact. But if they're not looking for it, which in most cases they're not, they're not going to get there.”
Parents across the country claim social media companies continue to allow children under 18 years old to not only see harmful videos but are also designed to push those images. In some cases, they also claim their children obtained illegal drugs.
Diana Trujillo says her 16-year-old son Juan bought what he thought were edible marijuana gummies. Investigators say they were laced with fentanyl.
The North Fort Myers mom says the honor roll student got linked up with the wrong people and she blames Snapchat for being a conduent.
“In other words, we're just trying to make social media companies follow the same rules that every other company in America follows,” Bergman said. “And that's the duty of reasonable care. Not clairvoyant, not 100% perfect, but simply follow the golden rule, and put the safety of of your kids at the same level of the profits to your shareholders. Simple as that. Every other company has to do that.”
In a statement, Snapchat shared what the platform is doing to shut down drug-related content.
"While we can't comment specifically on active litigation, we can share all the progress we have made in this area. We use cutting-edge technology to proactively find and shut down drug dealers' accounts, and we block search results for drug-related terms, instead redirecting Snapchatters to resources from experts about the dangers of fentanyl. We have also expanded our support for law enforcement investigations, promoted in-app educational videos warning about the dangers of counterfeit pills that have been viewed over 260 million times on Snapchat, and are partnering with the Ad Council, non-profit organizations, and other platforms on an unprecedented national public awareness campaign that launched in October."