An Oregon mom is suing Snap and Meta for allegedly turning her daughter into a violent cell phone addict who has developed an eating disorder and undergone multiple psychiatric admissions in the past couple of years.
Brittney Doffing says her daughter was a well-adjusted teenager until she caved and bought her a smartphone for her 14th birthday in March 2020 so she could keep up with her friends during the pandemic.
'It happened very, very fast,' she told KOIN.
'Anytime I try to take the phone, she would get very physical, violent, verbal with me, with her sisters. She would smash the phones so that I couldn't review the content.'
Doffing is suing the parent companies of Snapchat and Instagram with the help of the Social Media Victims Law Center. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Oregon.
It comes months after leaked research provided to The Wall Street Journal revealed that since at least 2019, Facebook has been warned that Instagram harms young girls' body image. An internal presentation found that among teens who felt suicidal, 13 percent of British users and 6 percent of American users traced their suicidal feelings to Instagram.
Doffing's product liability lawsuit accuses Meta and Snap of knowing their product was dangerous when used as intended and of failing to warn users of their consequences. It also claims the social media companies facilitated the 'sexual exploitation and solicitation' of Doffing's daughter by failing to prevent anonymous, older users from contacting kids on the apps.
On the same day as Doffing's lawsuit, another mother filed a wrongful death suit against Snap and Meta, accusing them of leading to her daughter's suicide in July.
Brittney Doffing says her daughter was a well-adjusted teenager until she caved and bought her a smartphone for her 14th birthday in March 2020
She filed a federal lawsuit against Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and Snap, which owns Snapchat, seeking unspecified punitive and compensatory damages
Doffing says her daughter would become physially abusive when the phone was pried away from her. Above, a protest against illicit drug availability on Snapchat near the Snap, Inc. headquarters in Santa Monica on Friday
That lawsuit, also led by the Social Media Victims Law Center, alleges that 11-year-old Selena Rodriguez of Enfield, Connecticut was also addicted to social media and would run away from home to use it when her parents prevented her from accessing the sites, according to The Washington Post.
Doffing says her daughter, identified in the lawsuit as M.K., was a happy, high-achieving child just a couple years ago.
She lives in Ashland, a city in southern Oregon just 19 mi from the California border.
'She was in volleyball. She was in track. She was in basketball. She did drama. I mean, she was very outgoing,' Doffing told KOIN.
'Her birthday came around and she was really wanting a cell phone and I was really hesitant about it, but then I kind of broke down because she lost all connections with everybody through school and that's how a lot of her friends interacted, through cell phones.'
The 31-page complaint says that Doffing's daughter has been hospitalized twice for psychiatric episodes triggered by her mom's attempts to take her phone away.
She's also developed an eating disorder, engaging in crash diets followed by binge eating.
Doffing's daughter has even tried to run away from home so she could get on the apps.
'Anytime I try to take the phone, she would get very physical, violent, verbal with me, with her sisters. She would smash the phones so that I couldn't review the content,' Doffing said
The lawsuit claims that Meta and Snap have purposely designed their products to be addictive, singling out Snapchat as being 'akin to a slot machine but marketed toward teenage users who are even more susceptible than gambling addicts to the variable reward and reminder system designed by Snap.'
It also faults the companies for not doing enough to curb the solicitation of minors on the app.
'Defendants have specifically designed Instagram and Snapchat to be attractive nuisances to underage users but failed to exercise ordinary care owed to underage business invitees to prevent the rampant solicitation of underage girls by anonymous older users who do not disclose their real identities, and mass message underage users with the goal of grooming and sexually exploiting minors.'
Doffing told KOIN that she's seen adults messaging her teen daughter on the platforms.
'In her accounts there's been grown women and men called Sugar Daddies and Sugar Mama accounts that send them money,' Doffing said. 'I have a screenshot of one asking that they were going to send her, like, $2500 or something.'
