. CJ Dawley died by suicide at the age of 17. His parents allege his social media addiction contributed to his death.
On Jan. 4, 2015, while his family was taking down their Christmas tree and decorations, CJ retreated into his room. He sent a text message to his best friend --"God's speed" -- and posted an update on his Facebook page:"Who turned out the light?" CJ held a .22-calibre rifle in one hand, his smartphone in the other and fatally shot himself. He was 17. Police found a suicide note written on the envelope of a college acceptance letter.
Donna Dawley said she and her husband, Chris, believe CJ's mental health suffered as a direct result of the addictive nature of the platforms. They said they were motivated to file the lawsuit against Meta and Snap after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugenhundreds of internal documents, including some that showed the company was aware of the ways Instagram can damage mental health and body image.
"Money is not what is driving Donna and Chris Dawley to file this case and re-live their unimaginable loss they sustained," Bergman said."The only way to force [social media companies] to change their dangerous but highly profitable algorithms is to change their economic calculus by making them pay the true costs that their dangerous products have inflicted on families such as the Dawleys.
Meta also declined to comment on the case because it is in litigation but said the company currently offers a series of suicide prevention tools, such as automatically providing resources to a user if a friend or AI detects a post is about suicide."For seven years, we were trying to figure out what happened," said Donna Dawley, the mother of CJ.
"After trying to get into some of his social media accounts, we found video of him [taken] on Snapchat that looked like he was playing Russian roulette with the gun," Mitchell said."We don't know who he was sending it to or if he was playing with someone. The phone was found not too far from his body."The emergence of wrongful death lawsuits against social media companies isn't limited to teenagers.
"If a person walks into a bad neighbourhood and is assaulted, that's a regrettable incident," said Bergman, who is also representing the Rodriguez family."But if a tour guide says, 'Let me show you around the city or I'll show you the top sites,' and one of those [spots] is a very dangerous neighbourhood where a person is assaulted, the tour guide appropriately has some responsibility for putting the tourist in harm's way.
"There's a lot of information we didn't have before," Tobias said."When a company, entity or an individual knows they're exposing someone else to a risk of harm, then tort law and product liability law is sometimes willing to impose liability."
Parents of bullies should be held accountable and there children should be home schooled. Kids that pick on others until they kill themselves should be put to death or institutionalized for life. Pink shirts don't stop bullies.
It is your job to watch your own kids…
1/2 What's with the parent blaming? Yeah, sure, the parents have responsibilities but we don't actually know everything they did or didn't do in their efforts to curb their son's social media addiction. All of these platforms are quite literally designed to be addictive...
From the comments, we really do live in a world that idealizes what the average human parent should be able to do. Have some compassion and look around you and see if there are some parents who need some support rather than coming on here and judging people so harshly.
This is stupid, you failed to set boundaries as a parent and now you want to blame someone else for your incompetence?
Raise a kid to become a mature man or woman is the responsibility of the parents, these parents failed their duty and want to blame someone else….
That's a pretty heavy accusation to lay. Should we have sued record companies for this type of thing back in the day 👇? No. Social media is a toxic influence, but it's our job as parents to keep our kids safe from such influences, nobody else's.
So shouldn’t people who die of second hand smoke or cigarettes should sue the cigarette company? Makes no sense
Seriously!
It's great that parents wants social media companies to be held responsible and have change. But kids can just lie about their age just to get around the parental controls. The system has to go deeper if parents wants to see success.
Cmon... you're the parents, trying to blame the internet that you facilitated is a joke