‘I’m begging you’: what Snapchat knew about addicted users | TBIJ

Over the past week we’ve been going through a treasure trove of nearly 6,000 pages of court filings that draw on internal emails, research and documents from major social media companies. They were released by a California court as part of ongoing multi-district litigation from more than 1,800 plaintiffs including parents and school districts. It alleges that platforms including TikTok, Meta, Google and Snapchat knowingly built addictive products that were harmful to children. Some of these documents have already been reported on, mostly those containing internal emails from Meta. But the focus on Meta has let some other companies off the hook. Some of our most alarming discoveries concern Snapchat, a platform with an especially young user base. Nearly two thirds of 13 to 17-year-olds in the UK have a Snapchat profile according to Ofcom. And the company claims it has nearly a billion monthly active users. The documents we found show that some users have deeply unhealthy relationships with the platform, specifically concerning issues of addiction, anxiety and body image. They also show that staff were well aware of this. In fact, Snapchat staff have repeatedly raised concerns about the risks to young users’ mental health posed by some
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