Mother sues social media companies after daughter dies by suicide | The Independent

Warning: This story contains references to youth suicide The mother of an 11-year-old girl who died by suicide after being bullied online is suing social media giants Meta and Snap.The wrongful-death lawsuit alleges Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and Snap, parent company of Snapchat, the child’s death was a direct result of the platforms’ “inaction and deliberate addictive design”.Selena Rodriguez, of Enfield, Connecticut, died on 21 July last year after struggling with an “extreme addiction” to Instagram and Snapchat for two years, according to a statement from the Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC), who filed the complaint in a US district court in California this week.Her addiction to social media worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic, the statement said, due to the “constant 24-hour stream of notifications and alerts”, causing her to experience severe sleep deprivation.Selena was “constantly solicited” for sexually exploitive content on the platforms, the statement said.After she succumbed to the pressure and sent sexually explicit images of herself to another person on Snapchat they were shared with her classmates, “increasing the ridicule and embarrassment she experienced at school”.“As a result, Selena was hospitalised for emergency psychiatric care and experienced worsening depression, poor self-esteem, eating disorders, self-harm, and…
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