00:00In 2024, Rossella Uguez took her own life. The 12-year-old had spent her last five months on
00:07social media, which kept pushing depressive content to her, according to her parents.
00:12Irene Ruggiero Uguez is now among a group of Italian parents taking two social media giants
00:18to court. If there had not been the algorithm, if there had not been this browsing,
00:23I have the hope that we would have had more time to understand.
00:29Rossella Uguez believes her daughter's psychological struggles would have evolved more gradually
00:34and allowed the family to spot warning signs, if not for the stream of self-harm content
00:40she was fed on social media. At a certain point, this something that was born from her took life,
00:47took space, ate the cheerful part, the sociable part, the bright part of her.
00:56Her child's behavior changed dramatically in just a few months, Rossella Uguez says,
01:02but the family only understood what she had been exposed to when they unlocked her devices
01:07after her death. And they're now backing a lawsuit against TikTok and Meta, which owns Facebook and
01:14Instagram to push for tighter limits on minors' access and greater awareness of the risks young
01:20users face. The case is among the first collective actions in Italy to challenge social media firms
01:26and their algorithms. Both companies deny the lawsuit's claims that their services are harmful
01:31to young people. They also say they take steps to protect young users by removing harmful content,
01:38limiting exposure to risky material, and helping families manage children's accounts.
01:42The impact of social media platforms depends on how they're used, the safeguards in place,
01:48and the level of parental involvement, Meta to Reuters. Their parents, like Valentina Muralia,
01:54say the company's efforts are not enough. Muralia, who is a board member of Italy's Association of
02:00Large Families, says asking parents to monitor social media use full-time is simply unrealistic.
02:07She says the idea is not to doom the platforms, but to force them to engage in dialogue to find
02:13ways to
02:14improve the situation. Perhaps we don't even need to ban young people from social media, she says,
02:19but we should create social media suitable for young people. Scrutiny of digital platforms is
02:27intensifying around the world. A growing number of countries are looking to tighten access for young
02:32people. The World Health Organization has warned that addiction-like behavior in social media use
02:37is increasing among adolescents. The Italian case argues that the social platforms use reward mechanisms
02:45modeled on slot machines that foster dependency. The plaintiffs cite brain scan studies that appear to link
02:51social media use with addiction. Still, some psychologists, like Professor Federico Tonioni,
02:59urge caution about drawing simple conclusions. He's the head of the Web Psychopathology Center at the
03:05Polyclinico Gemelli Foundation in Rome. I can't say that if social media didn't exist,
03:12my patients would suffer any less, he says. Young people need to be listened to. We never listen to them.
03:19That's the truth.
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