By the time she was 12, Alexis had developed an eating disorder. She had multiple Instagram accounts and says she would spend five hours a day scrolling through the app, even though it often made her feel depressed.
Kathleen Spence: That was the scariest day of our lives. I got a call to come to the school. And I went there and they were just showing me all of these Instagram posts of how Alexis wanted to kill herself and hurt herself. And if Instagram is really -- has all the software to protect them, why was that not flagged? Why was that not identified?
Attorney Matt Bergman represents the Spence family. He started the Social Media Victims Law Center after reading the Facebook papers and is now working with more than 1,800 families who are pursuing lawsuits against social media companies like Meta. Matt Bergman: Time and time again, when they have an opportunity to choose between safety of our kids and profits, they always choose profits.
Matt Bergman: Well, of course it is. I'm all for parental responsibility. But these products are explicitly designed to evade parental authority. Matt Bergman: Number one is age and identity verification. You know, that technology exists. You know, if people are trying to hook up on Tinder there's technology to make sure that the people are who they say they are. Number two would be turn off the algorithms.
Toney Roberts: There was a video. And that video was a lady on Instagram pretending to hang herself, and that's ultimately what our child did. Cause, you ask yourself, how did she come up with this idea? And then when I did the research, there it was. She saw it on Instagram. It was on her phone.
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