A mother’s quest for social media reform
Warning: This episode mentions suicide. If you are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.
There seems to be growing momentum for efforts to protect kids from online harm. In June, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for a warning label on social media for kids, and more recently the Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act with bipartisan support.
On the show we’ve heard from lobbyists and advocates on different sides of the issue. Today we speak with Kristin Bride, for whom the debate is personal. In 2020, Bride’s 16-year-old son, Carson, died by suicide after being cyberbullied on the social media platform Snapchat.
Since then, Bride has become a vocal advocate for social media reform because, she says, even the most vigilant parents can’t always protect their kids. The following is an edited transcript of her conversation with Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino.
Kristin Bride: We waited until Carson was through middle school to give him his first phone. But when he got to high school, he begged for Snapchat because that was the way all the kids were connecting. What we didn’t know is that Snapchat had allowed anonymous apps on the backend of their product. And so he received over 100 negative, harassing, threatening messages in the weeks leading to his suicide over YOLO and LMK, the two anonymous apps. He had a private account, so he knew that these were from his high school classmates. And the last search on his phone before he ended his life was for hacks to find out who was doing this to him.
Meghan McCarty Carino: Were you aware at all that there was a problem?
Bride: We were not. And that is the thing that is different about cyberbullying. Many of the kids who are victims believe that they can handle it themselves, and Carson was doing his best to try to find out who was doing this to him, asking kids to swipe up and identify themselves so they could talk things out in person. There were bullying incidents at school, but Carson always talked to us about those, and we got those handled. This was during the pandemic, and so the kids were at home, and it was the last thing on my mind that he would be receiving this sort of harassment online. He had just gotten his first summer job, came home that night, wrote his upcoming work schedule on our kitchen calendar, was happy, and we were looking forward to a great summer. And it just came as such an absolute shock that this happened to us.
McCarty Carino: You talked about the significance of the anonymity of these apps. What is so unique about cyberbullying?
Bride: Well, with the anonymous apps, there’s no accountability about what they say online, and so when you give kids the ability to say whatever they want online with no accountability, it very often leads to cyberbullying. And if you look at the history over the last decade of anonymous apps, they come about, they lead to cyberbullying when marketed to teens, usually a suicide, they shut down and then a new one comes to market.
McCarty Carino: You have turned your incredible loss into a push for change on this issue. What kind of progress have you seen made?
Bride: When Carson died, I felt completely alone. And now, I am one of many, many parents who have lost their child to online harms. There is a movement happening. Parents are understanding the dangers of these apps. We see the phone-free-school movement happening, which is really exciting, and the movement of the Kids Online Safety Act. It passed with a landslide in the Senate, 91-3, in July, and we’re looking forward to seeing it pass in the House as well.
McCarty Carino: And you were instrumental in some changes that Snapchat made to its functionality, right?
Bride: Yes. So after Carson died, and I learned through the school community that he had been cyberbullied over YOLO — I was not familiar with it because I didn’t know Snapchat had allowed it on their backend — I did some research. YOLO had policies in place that said that they would reveal the identities of those who cyberbully on their platform and ban them from the site. And so I reached out to YOLO on four separate occasions, asking them to follow their own stated policies, and I was ignored. And it was really at this point that I had a choice to make: Do I just accept this, or do I begin to fight back? And I chose to fight back and be very public about what happened to Carson. I filed a national class-action lawsuit against Snapchat, YOLO and LMK. Within days of filing the lawsuit, Snapchat had banned those two apps off of their backend, and six months later made policy changes stating that they would not allow anonymous apps on their Snap Kit.
McCarty Carino: In general, how would you characterize the response of tech companies to the very grave concerns of so many parents like yourself and a growing chorus of policymakers too?
Bride: It’s been disappointing. We have met with trust-and-safety teams of some of these big companies explaining what happened to our children and why it’s so important to make these platforms safer. And although I’m sure that they are all good people in the trust-and-safety teams, you have to really turn to the CEOs of the companies. And when their goal is to make profit, they will continue to make poor choices in the design of their products to keep kids online longer so that they can collect their data and then sell it to advertisers.
McCarty Carino: What are some important changes that you still want to see made to these services and how they operate?
Bride: Well, I would like to see KOSA pass because it requires that these companies will have a duty of care when they are designing their platforms. And this will help with cyberbullying as well. And if I can give a recent example of anonymous app NGL, filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint against them. This was one that came out after Carson died. They were charging kids for useless hints as to who was messaging them. And we thought that was the extent of the harm. But what came out in the complaint was that the co-founders were actually, through bots, sending the teens harassing messages, such as, “We know what you did. Your friend has a secret on you. Are you sure you’re straight?” The teens were expressing extreme anxiety about these messages, reporting self-harm and possible suicide, and the co-founders laughed about it, calling them suckers. And so this is an example where if KOSA was in place, this company would absolutely be in violation in that the design of their product was to cyberbully.
McCarty Carino: What words would you like to leave our listeners with as we continue to grapple with how to keep kids safe online?
Bride: My advice would be to encourage phone-free schools in your community, to wait until you give your children an iPhone, a smartphone, for as long as possible — definitely when they’re through middle school. Give them as much time as possible to make real connections with real kids and help them to realize that there is life beyond the screen in front of them.
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