Families sue four tech giants over teenagers’ deaths by suicide

The families of four teenagers who died by suicide are suing Meta, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube, alleging the social media companies designed addictive products that fueled severe mental health problems and ultimately contributed to the teens’ deaths.The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Delaware Superior Court, alleged the platforms caused years of harm, including social media addiction, chronic sleep deprivation, depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.The complaint was filed by the Social Media Victims Law Center on behalf of four families from Minnesota, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. The children, who were 13, 14, 17, and 18 years old, died between July 2024 and September 2025, according to the firm. “These children had bright futures, and they relied on Defendants’ reputations and representations that their products were fun and safe,” the lawsuit said. “Instead, each of them suffered severe injuries proximately caused by Defendants’ defective and unreasonably dangerous social media products, including but not limited to social media addiction, severe sleep deprivation, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and, ultimately, death.”The complaint alleged the companies falsely portrayed their platforms as safe and non-addictive while concealing known risks.“These representations ranged from incomplete and/or misleading to outright false,” the lawsuit reads. It alleges the companies knew consumers and parents would rely on those representations “to their detriment.”The filing also accused the companies of knowingly designing highly addictive platforms while obscuring their harms.“Defendants have been denying and burying the truth for years,” the complaint said, comparing social media companies’ tactics to those once used by the tobacco industry while arguing the platforms are even more effective at reaching children because they are widely available on internet-connected devices.The Social Media Victims Law Center said the four families described strikingly similar experiences despite living hundreds of miles apart.“Despite living hundreds of miles apart, their parents describe nearly identical patterns: once-vibrant children who became anxious, withdrawn or depressed as their use of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube intensified,” the group told CBS News.HUGGING FACE SAYS OPENAI AGENT WAS IN SYSTEM DAYS BEFORE ATTACKMatthew Bergman, the firm’s founding attorney, said the companies’ “actions have eroded public trust, misled policymakers, and created a national youth mental health crisis that has already cost us a generation and will take years to repair.”The lawsuit is the latest in a growing wave of litigation accusing social media companies of knowingly creating addictive products that harm young users. It follows a landmark May verdict in which a jury found Meta and YouTube liable for creating products that led to harmful and addictive behavior among children.