Grieving parents awaited Mark Zuckerberg’s arrival at a courthouse in downtown Los Angeles for what is being called the social media industry’s “big tobacco moment”.
“I’m comforted by the fact he’s here alone, with only his lawyers and a jury. He’s without his lobbyists or his PR machine,” says Lori Schott, whose 18-year-old daughter Annalee had a social media addiction and died by suicide in 2020.
“If we would have been here in this court 10 years earlier she would have still been alive,” she adds.
‘They knew what they were doing’
Lori tells me how Annalee, who she describes as the central cog of their family, grew up on a farm in rural Colorado, but an interest in rodeos and horses was superseded by addiction to social media.
On TikTok and Instagram, she would use beauty filters, says Lori, and compare herself to other girls. Annalee’s anxiety and depression grew, and she even viewed a live suicide video online.
“They [the social media companies] knew what they were doing,” says Lori. “They did it for profit motives, and it’s got to stop. Our children deserve to take control of their own digital footprint.
“My daughter shouldn’t have had content pushed at her that said she was ugly, or her life had no future. This was an addiction by design, metrics were set on increasing usage. Some call it capitalism, I call it murder.”
Lori argues social media platforms are inherently addictive, and that the addictive nature of them has led to a host of…
