As the landmark lawsuit accusing social media companies of producing products that are addictive and harmful to children continues, online safety advocates gathered outside the courthouse in downtown L.A. to demand change.
A mom named Juliana Arnold told reporters she lost her daughter due to online addiction.
“My daughter Coco, just a couple of weeks after her 17th birthday, was approached by a man on Instagram who groomed her, lured her to meet him, and gave her or sold her, we're not sure, a pill that she thought was Percocet for her anxiety, and it turned out to be fentanyl,” she said. “And that day she left, said she was going thrifting with a friend, and she never came home.”
She said her daughter was vulnerable to the effects of social media, adding that it “really fed into her need for dopamine hits all the time.”
“All the features that they have are incredibly addictive, as we're learning in this trial, and that's what happened to my daughter and her downward spiral,” she said. “And no matter what I did… I was playing whack-a-mole. I tried all the safety tools. I monitored her. I spoke with her about the issues, but kids these days, if they want to get to social media, they will get to social media, and parents don't have a chance because these multi-trillion dollar companies are designing their platforms purposely to be addictive for our children, and that is no match for any family, nor one that they should have to face.”
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Advocates also said that “safety should be the default” and that there should by “third-party independent verification of the safety features for all of its users.”
The lawsuit was filed by a 20-year-old known as KGM. She was scheduled to testify on Wednesday about how she became addicted and how it caused her to suffer from mental health issues.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, have testified in court as well.
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