![]() He was soon staying up until the early-morning hours every night, scrolling through endless feeds, and communicating with strangers. ![]() , Middle school student Liam Birchfield, who once enjoyed playing his guitar and planned to join the United States Air Force after high school, tragically became addicted to Snapchat and Instagram. was hospitalized twice as a result of psychiatric episodes related to her addiction. running away so she could access social media some other way. Her mother intervened by confiscating her daughter’s phone, which only resulted in M.K. received sexually explicit communications from adult male sexual predators and became obsessed with her body image, resulting in an eating disorder. She became sleep-deprived, and her performance at school suffered drastically. ![]() She immediately installed Instagram and Snapchat. received her first phone compatible with social media apps. In March 2020, on her 14th birthday, M.K. for negative impacts on M.K.’s mental health. and Snap Inc., Brittney Doffing and her minor daughter M.K. Despite multiple psychiatric hospitalizations, outpatient therapy, and her mother’s attempts to remove access to social media, Selena’s addiction to the platform ultimately led to her suicide on July 21, 2021. Selena developed eating disorders, low self-esteem, and severe depression. She regularly interacted with men and sent them explicit selfies, which were then publicly shared and resulted in bullying at school. By the time she reached 11, Selena had become sleep-deprived from constant checking of notifications at all hours of the day. , Selena Rodriguez became addicted to Snapchat and Instagram at the age of nine. ![]() Meta Platforms, the owners of Instagram, have also been named in these lawsuits. They have filed several lawsuits against Snapchat on behalf of families whose children were targeted and harmed by the platform’s algorithmic discrimination, which recommends and promotes inappropriate content to young people based on their gender and race. The Social Media Victims Law Center works to hold social media companies legally accountable for the harm they inflict on vulnerable users. It’s no wonder that parents are filing Snapchat lawsuits accusing the company of failing to warn users about the dangers of its product, defective design, and gender discrimination, among other complaints. These unique Snapchat features prevent parental monitoring, compel daily use of the platform, and allow users to reveal their location. Theoretically, only “friends” can see it, but many Snapchat friends are not people teen users know and can be sexual predators, or drug dealers. This feature may also encourage sexual predators to actively participate on the platform.Ī feature called “Snap Maps” allow users to share and view each other’s locations. This creates the illusion that pictures and videos posted on Snapchat are temporary and may encourage teens to share content they otherwise wouldn’t, like explicit images or cyberbullying messages. Snapchat users can post images or videos known as “snaps.” Snapchat offers users the ability to set time limits on snaps, so they disappear as soon as they are viewed. As a result, children are not merely stumbling upon harmful information, but are actually being pointed to it. Snapchat has a profit model based on how many hours they keep children online. The platform boasted over 85 million users in the United States alone as of 2020, and current projections suggest this number will grow to nearly 90 million by 2023. Unfortunately, while Snapchat may be wildly popular with youth, its addictive algorithm and inherently harmful features have led to serious mental health problems and suicide among children and teens. Thirty-five percent of teens named Snapchat, owned by Snap Inc., as their “Number One” preferred social media platform, according to Statista in 2021.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |