RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 22 sourcesx whatsapp-stroke copylink google Add Al Jazeera on Google info By Saumya Roy Published On 27 Aug 2026 27 Aug 2026 Oakland, California, the US – During the COVID-19 pandemic, Erin Popolo’s then-16-year-old daughter Emily took a job at a cafe near her home in Bridgewater, New Jersey, making pizza. Emily had always battled mental health issues, but when some classmates posted photos of her with an apron and hairnet on social media and began cyberbullying her, it got worse.
Emily had joined Facebook and Instagram just before the pandemic and stayed on because “she wanted to have friends, be in a group”, things she struggled with otherwise, Popolo said. She had used the report button to take down the negative comments against her daughter, but to no avail. Emily died by suicide a few months later, at 17.
Last week, Popolo joined a group of parents outside a United States federal court in Oakland. Hearings had begun in a case in which 29 US states sued Meta , the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for design flaws in its products that the plaintiffs said led to children becoming addicted and allowed them to be contacted by drug dealers, cyberbullied, extorted and abused.
The high-stakes case sought up to $200bn in fines as well as changes to Meta’s products and business practices.
On Wednesday, Meta settled the case for $18bn and agreed to increase protections for young users.
While the settlement has been hailed as historic, Popolo asked: “What evidence did they not want to get out?”
The trial had started on August 18 and was expected to last six weeks.
Mary Rodee, whose 15-year-old son died by suicide after becoming the target of online extortion, said the measures announced on Wednesday would not have protected him.
“We were robbed of seeing the evidence” because of the settlement, she told Al Jazeera.
“Our kids need to be protected from your algorithms and ads,” she said about Meta, pointing out that the settlement does not restrict advertising to minors or make algorithms transparent.
She said she hopes there will be more cases against Meta. She wants to see convictions and increased transparency in their processes.
The states’ case had included internal documents showing that Meta’s top executives knew of the security loopholes in their platforms.
In his testimony on Tuesday, Instagram’s chief executive Adam Mosseri said that Instagram had added a pop-up feature to all teen accounts in 2024, asking them to take a break from scrolling, as well as a quiet mode for notifications.
Jason Slothouber, from the Colorado attorney general’s office, asked if Mosseri was aware that parents had no way of knowing that only 1 percent to 2 percent of children used this feature. Mosseri confirmed they did not. He was scheduled to testify again on Wednesday, but then the settlement was reached.
Lori Schott, a resident of Colorado, said she lost her 18-year-old daughter, Annalee, to suicide.
Annalee had received a constant stream of messages, Schott said, that had made her feel she was not beautiful enough.
Schott, who had also been outside court on the first day of the trial, as well as in Los Angeles, where Meta was previously sued in March, said Instagram needs to introduce more stringent measures to protect teens.
“I would like to see less addictive design, including limits on infinite scroll, autoplay streaks, constant notifications, and algorithmic feeds,” she said of features that form the bedrock of Instagram’s model. “It keeps kids online.”
“I would like to see more control over the algorithms, including their ability to turn off personalised recommendations or use the chronological feeds that were pushing content to my daughter, like dealing with suicide and eating disorders.”
In chronological feeds, the latest content is added on top, and critics say this keeps users hooked as they keep coming back to the app to see if something new has come.
As part of the settlement, Meta has agreed to some changes, including setting two-hour time limits for users under 18, as well as night-time and school-time blocks.
On the first day of the trial in Oakland, California, Popolo, Schott and other parents held a banner with the names of the 398 children who they say had died because of social media addiction and bullying.
Popolo said the number of children on their banner has gone up from 356 in March, when parents held it up outside the Los Angeles court. In that case, Meta was handed a $4.2m fine.
Apart from cyberbullies, parents spoke of drug dealers and overseas extortion gangs contacting their children through fake accounts and selling them fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, or extorting them for money after getting them in embarrassing situations.
In upstate New York, Mary Rodee and Darren Basford’s 15-year-old son Riley had always wanted a snowmobile, and had turned to Facebook Messenger in March 2021 to look for one.
Once there, he began receiving messages from someone he thought was a teenage girl. They exchanged private photos, after which the girl, who was actually a group of men from the Ivory Coast, began threatening to send the pictures to his parents and share them widely if he did not pay them $3,500.
Riley asked for time, but the threats escalated throughout the next day, while he got his braces fixed with his mother and got a milkshake. She dropped him off at his father’s house to spend the night.
In the early hours of the morning, Basford found Riley dead. He had died by suicide, Basford said, rather than facing the shame of his private photos being shared with family and friends.
Riley’s mother, Mary Rodee, stood outside the court in Oakland on the first day of the trial, just as she had in Los Angeles, and had hoped to see Meta held to account.
There are dangers beyond extortion, including easy contact with drug dealers.
Deb Schmill’s 15-year-old daughter Becca was raped by a boy she met on a chat group and then cyberbullied. The bullies “knew sh...
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