Social media companies sued over deaths of four teens as pressure, lawsuits over child safety mount

Kaitlyn Huamani And Barbara Ortutay, The Associated Press

The families of four teenagers who died by suicide are suing Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube over what they describe as “years of escalating harms” from using their platforms that eventually resulted in their deaths.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the Superior Court of Delaware, is the latest in a flurry of suits filed against the social media giants that alleges their platforms are addictive and dangerous.

The complaint was filed on behalf of four families from Texas, North Carolina, Minnesota and Tennessee whose children died over a 14-month period starting in July 2024 through September 2025.

The Social Media Victims Law Center is bringing the suit on behalf of the families, and its founding attorney, Matthew Bergman, said it’s “particularly salient” that the children in this case died “long after” similar suits had been filed.

“These platforms continue to kill kids, despite the platitudes of their executives,” Bergman said in an interview. “This is a clear and present danger to the health and safety of children, not just in the United States but around the world.”

The four teens who died by suicide each experienced harms including social media addiction, severe sleep deprivation, depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation after years of using the social platforms, the complaint states. Livi Castro died at age 13, Riv Kelleher at 14, Nathaniel Chambers at age 17 and Dawson Holden at 18.

The complaint alleges the social media companies knew they were causing harm to young users.

A spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, said in a statement that “providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work. In collaboration with mental health and parenting experts, we’ve built services and policies to provide young people with age-appropriate experiences, and parents with robust controls. We send our deepest sympathies to the families and are reviewing the claims in this lawsuit.”

Representatives for Meta, TikTok and Snap did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Sacha Haworth, executive director of The Tech Oversight Project, said in a statement that parents, activists and whistleblowers have come forward and met with lawmakers for years and “while Congress has dragged its feet, more children have died.”

Federal legislation of social media has moved at a glacial pace. The Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act — which had the support of parents’ groups and children’s advocacy organizations — exactly two years before this lawsuit was filed. The House of Representatives never voted on that version of the legislation, and the House and Senate are currently disagreeing on key provisions they think should be included.

“Livi, Nathaniel, Dawson, and Riv’s stories are proof that Big Tech companies continue to lie about the safety of their products, choosing instead to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into false advertising, deceptive paid partnerships with trusted education programs and political lobbying,” Haworth’s statement continued.

Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap are facing numerous state and federal lawsuits over harms to minors. Meta is on trial in Tennessee this week for a lawsuit brought by the state attorney general claiming that the company deliberately designed its platforms, notably Instagram, to make them addictive to young people, and did not warn them of its dangers. And in August, Meta is heading to trial in federal court in Oakland, California to face four of dozens of states that sued the company in 2023. That lawsuit says the company is contributing to the youth mental health crisis by designing addictive features and violated federal law by collecting data on kids under 13 without parental consent.

Not all lawsuits are successful, and many are settled out of court. Last week, a Florida teenager dropped his case against Meta that was set to go to trial in state court in Los Angeles, without receiving any payment from the company. Meta had argued that the teen only used his Instagram and Facebook for just minutes a day, on average, and created most accounts only after hiring a lawyer in his case.

Still, the mounting court cases can get expensive, even for a company like Meta Platforms. Earlier this week Meta said it had $2.4 billion in legal expenses in the second quarter, which contributed to a relatively unusual 14% profit decline.

Learn more about our News Monitoring here.