“As a parent, I want businesses to understand the struggles my son faced with depression—comparing himself to others and taking on challenges on social media that the algorithms exposed him to,” she said in an interview with CNN.
Norma Nazario had a similar sentiment, having lost her 15-year-old son Zackery in a New York subway surfing disaster last year after he discovered footage of the craze on social media. Nazario was standing next to New York City Mayor Eric Adams during the press conference when he recently announced the city is suing five social media companies. Adams claims the platforms’ designs exploit the mental health of young users and cost New York $100 million in related health programs and services annually.
Her wrongful death lawsuit against TikTok, its parent firm, ByteDance, and Meta is still pending. It claims that her son’s social media addiction was caused by the algorithms of these sites. She continued by saying that she wanted to collaborate with legislators to raise the legal age of consent to use social media.
Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, signed a bill last month prohibiting minors under the age of 14 from opening personal social media accounts. (With parental approval, accounts will be permitted for teenagers ages 14 and 15).
The mother of Jaime Puerta’s co-star in the movie, Amy Neville, whose 14-year-old son Alexander passed away from a pure fentanyl tablet she thinks she bought on Snapchat in 2020, also tours the US, presenting the documentary to schoolchildren. She also presents a number of other movies in which she has been involved, one of which looks into the alleged drug trade that Snapchat has opened up to minors. Neville contributed to the cost of making one of the movies.