More than 1,200 families suing social media companies over kids’ mental health
When whistleblower Frances Haugen pulled back the curtain on Facebook last fall, thousands of pages of internal documents showed troubling signs that the social media giant knew its platforms could be negatively impacting youth and were doing little to effectively change it. With around 21 million American adolescents on social media, parents took note.
Today, there are more than 1,200 families pursuing lawsuits against social media companies including TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Roblox and Meta, the parent company to Instagram and Facebook.
More than 150 lawsuits will be moving forward next year. Tonight, you’ll hear from some of the families suing social media. We want to warn you that some of the content in this story is alarming, but we thought it was important to include because parents say the posts impacted their kids’ mental health and, in some cases, helped lead to the death of their children.