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Online Harms: A Parent's Fight for Social Media Regulation

Jan 2025 🇺🇸 Center for Countering Digital Hate

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 interview with CCDH chief executive Imran Ahmed, Kristin Bride discusses losing her 16-year-old son Carson to suicide in 2020, following a pattern of cyberbullying she says he experienced through the anonymous-messaging app Yolo, an add-on connected to Snapchat. She describes the product-liability and misrepresentation lawsuit she filed against the app in 2021, its dismissal on Section 230 grounds, and her subsequent appeal win on the misrepresentation claim, which she characterizes as creating an opening in Section 230's broad immunity. Bride frames her message as a call for collective pressure on large platforms rather than reliance on any single family's fight. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a substantive interview connecting one advocate's personal and legal history to the broader Section 230 reform debate, in association language throughout.

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Ahmed, Imran, interviewer. "Online Harms: A Parent's Fight for Social Media Regulation," featuring Kristin Bride. Center for Countering Digital Hate, January 16, 2025.

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