i m anderson cooper. you may have heard the u.s. surgeon general issued a warning that social media carries what he called a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescence. it s something all of us who are parents are worried about. because of a law passed in the mid-1990s, social media companies are shielded from almost all responsibility for the content their users post, no matter how untrue or harmful it may be. but now with billions of people online, the question is, have things spiraled out of control? we spoke with three families who are taking on some of the biggest social media companies in an uphill legal battle in an effort to change the way the internet works. some of the topics in the next hour including eating disorders and suicide and can be disturbing to watch. good morning. are you getting on, mom? yeah, let s get on. reporter: a tour bus through washington in spring is typically full of kids. oh, my. reporter
human behind the humor. thanks for joining us for the whole story. i m anderson cooper. you may have heard the u.s. surgeon general issued a warning that social media carries what he called a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescence. it s something all of us who are parents are worried about. because of a law passed in the mid-1990s, social media companies are shielded from almost all responsibility for the content their users post, no matter how untrue or harmful it may be. but now with billions of people online, the question is, have things spiraled out of control? especially when it comes to kids. we spoke with three families who are taking on some of the biggest social media companies in an uphill legal battle in an effort to change the way the internet works. we want to mention some of the topics in the next hour including eating disorders and suicide and can be disturbing to watch. good morning. are you getting on, mo
that recommended isis videos to users effectively helping to spread their terror message. today, the supreme court is hearing a case that could profoundly change the way you and i use the internet fundamentally disrupt the internet. reshape the internet as we know it. reporter: the court was being asked to decide if section 230 should still shield tech companies from liability or if the algorithms created to promote and recommend third-party content to users is a kind of editorial decision, speech they can be held accountable for. so meta, which is the parent company of instagram and facebook. they filed a brief and the lawyers argue that so-called targeted recommendations reflect nothing more than how online services organize and display content. they re arguing that these algorithms, that you say cause harm, that they should get rid
tiktok, snapchat and the parent company of facebook and instagram, meta. we lost our son to suicide. reporter: they believe the apps that gave us community and connection during the pandemic are targeting the youngest users, feeding them harmful information and fueling a mental health crisis among american adolescence. we lost our daughter, england roberts, to suicide. alex lost his life to a fentanyl poisoning through a pill he purchased on snapchat. reporter: so they re fighting. this little band of davids taking on economic goliaths. armed not with swords, but with stories. there s 16-year-old mark who was not in d.c. for this trip. 11-year-old selena represented in washington by her mom, tammy. and there s ceecee, a high school senior.
several other similar lawsuits against the social media giants, many of them represented by bergman, at least for the discovery phase of the case. tammy s lawsuit alleges that by mid-2021, selena was communicating with over 2,500 different individuals, all be a handful of whom were complete strangers to her and many of whom were adult users of defendants products. in selena s case, all we have is one of her instagram accounts and we don t yet have her snapchat and tiktok accounts. i shutter to think what we re going to see when we get the rest of it. reporter: tammy s lawsuit describes multiple incidents when selena exchanged sexually explicit images with users. in june, the lawsuit describes three instances where selena sent sexually explicit material to users with whom she was communicating. at the same time, according to the suit, users were threatening to expose sexually explicit images unless she sent more in