Advisory

Keeping Our Kids Safe Online

May 2024 🇺🇸 After Babel (Substack)

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 guest essay for Jonathan Haidt's After Babel newsletter, Kristin Bride writes in her own words about her son Carson, who she says received nearly a hundred harassing, threatening, and sexually explicit anonymous messages through apps linked to Snapchat in the weeks before his death by suicide in June 2020. She describes filing a class-action suit against the platform, which she says was followed by the removal of the anonymous-messaging add-ons in question, and argues that current law gives social media companies no legal 'duty of care' requiring them to weigh child safety in product design. She positions her advocacy for the Kids Online Safety Act and COPPA 2.0 as the practical response to that gap. TechKids Foundation includes this essay as a first-person advocacy piece laying out specific policy asks, presented as the author's argument rather than an independently adjudicated fact.

Nearly 100 messages, per Bride's account

Bride writes that Carson received close to a hundred harassing, threatening, and sexually explicit anonymous messages in the weeks before his death.

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CITATION

Bride, Kristin. "Keeping Our Kids Safe Online." After Babel (Substack), May 10, 2024.

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