Inside the legal battle to hold Silicon Valley accountable for harmful content.
Selena Rodriguez, 11, days before her death in 2021.Photo: Courtesy the Tammy Rodriguez
One therapist who evaluated Selena in the family’s hometown of Enfield, Connecticut, told her mother it was the “worst case of social-media addiction” she’d ever seen, and it was this addiction, her family later claimed, that would lead Selena to post a video to her Snapchat Story in July 2021, at 11 years old, in which she can be seen taking two of her mother’s Wellbutrin pills and a glug of soda, sticking out her tongue, and holding up a peace sign.
Rodriguez stopped sleeping in the months that followed Selena’s death and spent many nights as her daughter once had, scrolling. One of those nights, on Facebook, she saw a well-placed ad for Bergman’s law center. Something about the law firm’s bold logo, featuring a digital illustration of a smartphone, its screen filled by a courthouse, caught her attention. “Is my child addicted to social media?” its website asks. Rodriguez filled out a form that same night.
A big problem for social-media reformists is that it’s impossible to say with any certainty whether social media really is the source of so much widespread angst, even when it seems obvious to anyone who has been on the apps that they can be very bad for you. In her book, psychologist Jean M. Twenge declared, “The sudden, sharp rise in depressive symptoms occurred at almost exactly the same time that smartphones became ubiquitous and in-person interaction plummeted.
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