Facebook and Snapchat are both being sued over the suicide of a teenager in Wisconsin by his mother and an advocacy group holding the tech giants responsible for social media addiction.
Bloomberg reports that Facebook (Meta Platforms Inc.) and Snapchat (Snap Inc.) are being sued over the suicide of a teenager in Wisconsin by the teen’s mother and an advocacy group aiming to hold the tech giants responsible for addiction to their social media platforms.
The teenager, Christopher James Dawley, who went by CJ, was an honors student planning on going to college. But the young man reportedly became drawn into social media and was regularly communicating on Instagram until the early hours of the morning. CJ’s mother, Donna Dawley, filed a lawsuit against the tech giants, stating in her complaint:
CJ never showed outward signs of depression or mental injury but became addicted to defendants’ social media products, progressively sleep deprived, and increasingly obsessed with his body image.
While CJ’s family was clearing Christmas decorations in January 2014, just a month before CJ’s 17th birthday, the teenager posted a status to his Facebook page reading “who turned out the light?” He then held a 22-caliber rifle in one hand, his smartphone in the other, and shot himself.
The lawsuit, which was filed by Donna Dawley along with the Seattle-based Social Media Victims Law Center, alleges that Facebook purposefully designs algorithms to keep teens addicted to their platforms and promotes excessive use that they know is self-destructive.
“Neither Meta or Snap warned users or their parents of the addictive and mentally harmful effects that the use of their products was known to cause amongst minor users,” Donna Dawley said in her complaint.
Read more at Bloomberg here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com