Children’s Social Media and Suicide Lawyer Memphis

Memphis Lawyer Announces Social Media and Suicide Lawsuit

Darrell Castle is a children’s social media and suicide lawyer Memphis has trusted for decades to take on the biggest companies in the world. And now we’re taking on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat for encouraging suicide in children and teens.

Here’s what you need to know and how to get justice if you’ve been impacted.

How Has Social Media Encouraged Teen Suicide?

For some families, it may come as a shock that social media encouraged their children toward self-harm. It might even seem like a stretch. However, internal documents and investigations have shown the platforms do in fact promote suicide and self-harm in children. We’ve seen the same thing in our lawsuit on social media and eating disorders.

What’s worse, the companies knew and did nothing.

Social media can lead to teen suicide in several ways:

Cyberbullying

Social media platforms can be a breeding ground for cyberbullying, where anyone can anonymously harass and bully others. For children and teens, this sort of abuse can lead to feelings of isolation, depression, and low self-esteem—all of which can contribute to an increased risk of suicide.

Access to Harmful Content

The major social media platforms also provide access to graphic and potentially triggering content. Children and teens can access videos related to suicide and self-harm, including instructions and horrifying livestreams.

As a children’s social media and suicide lawyer in Memphis, I’ve seen it myself: the most toxic communities and hashtags actively encourage self-harm, and they’re available to most any child who wants to find them.

Comparison and Perfectionism

Social media often promotes an idealized version of reality, which can lead teens to compare themselves unfavorably to others. Studies have shown sites like Instagram and Snapchat increase feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem in teens and young girls.

While those feelings don’t necessarily correlate to self-harm, they can make kids a lot more vulnerable to depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems that do increase the risk of self-harm.

Impulsivity

Social media’s immediacy can feed into a feeling of impulsivity. Children don’t have the brain capacity to self-regulate their time on these sites or their reactions to how the sites work.

That means with extended social media use, kids and teens can become more likely to make impulsive decisions. For example, some kids may post about suicide or self-harm if they believe it will get them higher engagement or likes.

Addiction and Lack of In-Person Connection:

In addition, the platforms are extremely addictive—they were designed that way. So the very kids who need to get offline the most will often feel the most unable. Facebook’s own research revealed kids are saying, “I am unhappy when I use Instagram, and I can’t stop.”

Social media addiction leads to a disconnection from the real-world. At the very time a child might need social support networks the most, they are tied to a toxic platform instead.

Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat Knew and Did Nothing

These massive companies are well-aware their platforms are destroying kids’ mental health. And based on their behavior, they don’t intend to make even the most basic changes to fix it.

In fact, internal research showed 13% of British and 6% of American teens experiencing suicidal behavior or thoughts blamed Instagram. And even after that data broke, the companies made no plan to change.

As a few examples, the social media companies could change how they amplify information so kids can’t find dangerous content. They could censor certain information for underage users. And they could block abusive or harassing content from children’s private messages.

Instead, they’ve maintained the status quo. Children can still find dangerous content encouraging them toward self-harm. And until public outcry, Instagram actually tried to make their platform available to even younger children.

A Children’s Social Media and Suicide Lawyer Memphis Trusts

If your child experienced self-harm due to social media, you are not alone. You were not imagining things when your child seemed to change overnight. Across the country and around the world, parents have reported exactly the same thing. This did not happen to your child in a vacuum.

Our firm is actively seeking cases related to child suicide and social media. If you or your child is 23 or younger and experienced suicide, a suicide attempt, or self-harm, we would like to speak with you.

We believe you’re entitled to compensation, and we intend to take on these companies for what they did to your child. They violated our trust, created systems that destroyed lives, and didn’t protect our most vulnerable even after they’d been warned.

You deserve justice, and they deserve to be held accountable.

Contact us today  to get started. We’ll talk through your options and let you know what to expect. Our attorneys will approach your case with tenacity and respect. And we don’t win anything unless you do.

Call us at 901-327-2100 or fill out the form below. We look forward to speaking with you.

If you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone in the US 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.