Woman takes on Meta and Snap after ‘addicted’ daughter, 11, kills herself

Tammy Rodriguez has filed a lawsuit against the platforms, which she blames for her ‘extremely addicted’ child’s death

23 January 2022 - 17:21 By Robert Burnson and Malathi Nayak

Meta Platforms and Snap are to blame for the suicide of an 11-year-old who suffered from depression and sleep deprivation after becoming addicted to Instagram and Snapchat, says the girl’s mother.

In a lawsuit, she says Selena Rodriguez struggled for two years with an “extreme addiction” to Meta’s photo-sharing platform and Snap’s messaging app, before taking her life last year. Instagram and Snapchat have deliberately designed algorithms that keep teens hooked onto their platforms and “promote problematic and excessive use that they know is indicative of addictive and self-destructive use”, according to the San Francisco federal court case...

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