A mother is suing Instagram and Snapchat for their alleged role in her young daughter’s suicide

A mother filed a lawsuit against the company “Meta”, the founder of “Facebook” and “Instagram”, as well as to the company “Snapchat”, the owner of the famous video site, alleging that it caused a kind of addiction that her late daughter suffered from before she committed suicide. She is 11 years old.
The mother, Tami Rodriguez, of Connecticut, said in her lawsuit that her late daughter, Selena, “struggled for more than two years with a severe addiction to Instagram and Snapchat,” a claim apparently supported by an outpatient therapist, who confirmed He had “never seen a patient addicted to social media” as her daughter, according to Engadget.
Rodriguez continued, “The only way she used to effectively restrict her daughter’s access to these addicted sites was to confiscate her internet-enabled devices, but this simply caused her daughter to escape to access her social media accounts via other devices.”

Rodriguez claims that the use of these sites caused her daughter to develop depression, sleep deprivation, school absence, eating disorders, self-harm, and ultimately lead to her suicide in July 2021.
Tami Rodriguez also warned in the lawsuit that Snapchat’s “unknown and variable rewards are “closer to slot machines, but marketed to teenage users who are more vulnerable than gamblers,” as are “likes and followers.” On Instagram, according to her.
She also noted the lack of parental controls on Instagram and Snapchat, as well as the lack of robust age-verification checks, which made monitoring her daughter’s access to services almost impossible.
In its first comment on the lawsuit, Snap said in a statement: “We are shocked to hear of Selena’s death and our hearts go out to her family, and while we cannot comment on the details of the active litigation, nothing is more important to us than… well-being of our society.