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S5 Episode 5: Suicide by Cyberbullying — Carson's Story

Oct 2022 🇺🇸 Healthy Screen Habits

Suicide and self-harm are complex and never caused by one factor alone. Problematic screen use, cyberbullying, harmful content, and online exploitation may increase risk or intensify existing distress. If someone is in immediate danger or emotional crisis in the United States, call or text 988.

Outside the U.S.? Find your local helpline at findahelpline.com.

In this podcast interview with host Hillary Wilkinson, Kristin Bride describes her son Carson — 'funny and witty, affectionate,' in her words — and the anonymous-messaging apps linked to Snapchat that she says were used to send him repeated harassing and humiliating messages before his death by suicide in June 2020. Bride recounts that her family had discussed online safety, but Carson had not disclosed what he was experiencing, and she uses the episode to explain broader patterns of underreporting among teens who face cyberbullying. She describes turning her advocacy toward Oregon's parent-notification law (Carson's Law) and toward the federal Kids Online Safety Act. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a substantive long-form interview in which a bereaved parent connects a documented personal account to broader, association-language points about underreporting and platform design.

~12% of teens, per Bride's account

In the episode, Bride states that only about one in eight teens who experience cyber-harassment tell a parent, citing fear of device confiscation and social stigma as barriers to disclosure.

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CITATION

Wilkinson, Hillary, host. "S5 Episode 5: Suicide By CyberBullying — Carson's Story," featuring Kristin Bride. Healthy Screen Habits podcast, October 5, 2022.

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Talk

What Leaked Internal Documents Reveal About the Damage Facebook Has Caused (Fresh Air Interview)

In this September 23, 2021 Fresh Air interview, Terry Gross talks with Jeff Horwitz days after his Facebook Files series ran, in his own words rather than through the articles. Horwitz describes internal research in which the company's own staff associated Instagram with worsened body image for a share of teen girls — including a presentation to executives stating the platform made body-image issues worse for one in three teen girls reporting the issue — and internal findings in which some teen users who reported thoughts of self-harm traced those feelings to their Instagram experience. These are company-attributed associations from leaked research, not independent clinical findings. Horwitz also describes Facebook's public response, which characterized the research as small-effect and inconclusive. TechKids Foundation cites this as the lead reporter's own long-form account of what the leaked documents did and did not show.

Sep 2021 🇺🇸 NPR (Fresh Air)

News Investigation

I Mentored Mark Zuckerberg. I Loved Facebook. But I Can't Stay Silent About What's Happening.

Published as a TIME cover story and adapted from his book Zucked, this essay traces Roger McNamee's path from early Facebook investor and Mark Zuckerberg mentor to public critic. McNamee argues that advertising-driven platforms compete for attention by amplifying fear and outrage, and he associates this design with polarization, privacy erosion, and habit-forming use he characterizes as 'behavioral addiction' — his description, not a clinical finding. Directly relevant to this library, he warns that a growing share of children may come to prefer hyperstimulating virtual experience to the real world, and that products like Instagram can empower bullies. He closes by calling for public-health research on heavy internet use and for regulation of platform design. TechKids Foundation includes this essay as McNamee's most widely read condensed statement of his platform-design critique.

Jan 2019 🇺🇸 TIME

Video

Zucked: Early Facebook Investor Roger McNamee on How the Company Became a Threat to Democracy

In this Democracy Now! interview, early Facebook investor Roger McNamee walks through what he describes as the habit-building playbook of consumer platforms — notifications, rewards, and personalization tuned to keep people scrolling longer than they intend. He raises concerns specific to children and teens: he says Instagram carries 'huge issues with bullying and body shaming,' argues that products aimed at very young children, such as Messenger for kids, accustom them early to a world of constant data collection, and points to rising teen-suicide figures during the smartphone era as an alarming pattern that, in his view, demands scrutiny of social media's possible role — an association he raises, not an established causal finding. Suicide and self-harm are complex and never caused by one factor alone. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as McNamee's fullest on-record discussion of children and teens.

Oct 2019 🇺🇸 Democracy Now!

News Investigation

Renowned Indian American Psychiatrist Alok Kanojia in Trouble Over Conversations With Celebrity Gamer Before His Death

This news piece, drawing on New York Times reporting, describes a Massachusetts medical-licensing outcome tied to psychiatrist Dr. Alok Kanojia. In February 2020, Kanojia livestreamed six Twitch conversations with a well-known professional gamer who discussed his mental health history on camera; the gamer died by suicide months later. Following a roughly two-year review of a complaint, the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine issued a formal reprimand in June 2024, finding the livestreamed conversations undermined public confidence in the medical profession, though it imposed no suspension or practice restriction. Kanojia has said the sessions were never presented as psychotherapy and that Healthy Gamer changed how it structures guest interviews before the complaint was filed. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a documented example of the professional and regulatory stakes when a public figure blends mental-health-adjacent conversation with entertainment content involving a young person already navigating disclosed mental health struggles.

Aug 2024 🇺🇸 American Kahani

Government Report

Enfants et écrans : à la recherche du temps perdu

In January 2024, France's President asked a ten-member expert commission to spend three months studying children's exposure to screens; psychiatrist-addictologist Amine Benyamina and neurologist Servane Mouton co-chaired it. After interviewing roughly 150 young people and more than 100 professionals, the commission delivered a 130-page report in April 2024 with 29 directive recommendations. It describes French households owning about 10 screens on average and links heavy, unaccompanied screen exposure to poorer sleep, reduced physical activity, and myopia, and — framed as a risk factor among vulnerable teens, not a single cause — to associations with anxiety, depression, and suicide-risk indicators. It proposes no smartphone before 11, no connected phone before 13, and no social media before 15 except on 'ethically' designed platforms, plus new obligations on platforms, schools, and parents. TechKids treats the report as association-level evidence, consistent with the commission's own caution against single-cause claims.

Apr 2024 🇫🇷 Commission d'experts sur l'impact de l'exposition des jeunes aux écrans (convened by the French Presidency)

Testimony

Joint audition before the National Assembly's commission of inquiry into TikTok's psychological effects on minors

Under oath and appearing remotely together, Amine Benyamina and Servane Mouton testified before a French National Assembly inquiry into TikTok's effects on minors, one year after their government commission's report. Mouton walked lawmakers through the physical-health case against heavy screen use — poorer sleep, sedentary behavior, and eye strain — before turning to social media's mental-health risks, describing platform design built around attention and data monetization. Benyamina described treating clinical patients, including teens, for problematic TikTok use resembling substance-addiction patterns, while noting 'screen addiction' still lacks formal recognition in psychiatric classification systems. Both argued responsibility sits primarily with platform designers, not families, and repeated their commission's proposal of a 15-year minimum for access to social media platforms judged to be ethically designed, while acknowledging that no reliable, privacy-respecting age-verification system yet exists to enforce it.

May 2025 🇫🇷 Assemblée nationale — Commission d'enquête sur les effets psychologiques de TikTok sur les mineurs

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