Four Families Sue Meta, TikTok, Snap and YouTube Over Teen Suicides

Four families are suing Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, alleging the platforms' designs drove their teenage children to suicide after years of compulsive use, according to a complaint filed Thursday in the Superior Court of Delaware and reported by the New York Post.

The plaintiffs are the families of Livi Castro, who died at 13; Riv Kelleher, 14; Nathaniel Chambers, 17; and Dawson Holden, 18. They're from Texas, North Carolina, Minnesota and Tennessee. Their deaths occurred over a 14-month span, from July 2024 through September 2025.

The complaint states each teen suffered social media addiction, severe sleep deprivation, depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation tied to platform use before their deaths. It alleges the companies knew their products were causing harm to young users and kept them running largely unchanged anyway.

Who's Bringing the Case

The suit was filed by the Social Media Victims Law Center, whose founding attorney, Matthew Bergman, has led a string of similar actions against tech companies. Bergman told the Post it's "particularly salient" that these four teens died "long after" earlier lawsuits over the same issue had already been filed.

"These platforms continue to kill kids, despite the platitudes of their executives," Bergman said. "This is a clear and present danger to the health and safety of children, not just in the United States but around the world."

This is a civil complaint, not a criminal charge or a court finding. Nothing has been proven yet. The claims about what the companies knew and when will have to be established through discovery and litigation.

What the Companies Are Saying

A Google spokesperson, addressing the claims against YouTube, said providing young people with a "safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work," pointing to age-appropriate experiences and parental controls built with mental health and parenting experts. Google said it sends "deepest sympathies" to the families and is reviewing the claims.

Meta, TikTok and Snap did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to the Post. The absence of a response is not an admission, and all three companies deserve the chance to answer these specific allegations before judgment is rendered.

The companies' general position, which they've made in prior similar suits and before Congress, is that they've rolled out teen accounts, screen-time limits, default privacy settings for minors, and content moderation systems. They argue these tools represent real, ongoing investment in child safety, not empty gestures. Whether those tools were adequate, or deployed fast enough, is exactly the kind of question a jury or judge will have to weigh.

A Long Line of Lawsuits, and a Stalled Congress

This case joins what the Post describes as a flurry of suits against social media companies alleging their platforms are addictive by design. It's not an isolated filing. It's part of a growing body of litigation, including a massive multidistrict case already consolidated in federal court, arguing tech companies engineered products to maximize engagement among minors regardless of the psychological cost.

Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, put the blame squarely on lawmakers. "While Congress has dragged its feet, more children have died," Haworth said.

The Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act two years to the day before this new lawsuit was filed, according to the Post's reporting. The House never took up that version. The House and Senate are still hashing out disagreements over key provisions of child-safety legislation, with no resolution in sight as of this filing.

Whichever side of the aisle you're on, that's a fair complaint. A bill with backing from parents' groups and children's advocacy organizations cleared one chamber and has sat for two years without a floor vote in the other. Whatever the substantive disagreements over KOSA's specific provisions, including concerns raised by some free-speech and civil-liberties advocates about how the bill defines harmful content and who enforces it, the practical result is that federal regulation of these platforms has not moved.

What Happens Next

The Delaware case will now proceed through the normal civil litigation process: motions, discovery, and likely years before any trial or settlement. Whether the plaintiffs can prove the companies knew about specific harms to these specific teenagers and failed to act, as opposed to general awareness of industry-wide research on adolescent mental health, will be central to the case.

Meanwhile, the legislative fight over KOSA and related bills remains unresolved in Congress, leaving federal regulation of teen social media use to state legislatures and the courts for now.