Alexis was a typical 11-year-old. She loved musical theater and Webkinz. But when she started using Instagram, her normal pre-teen curiosities triggered the social media app to flood her feed with content about anorexia and how to hide eating disorders from your parents. Over the next few years, Alexis' mental health deteriorated so much that she had to be hospitalized. Some families aren't so lucky.
Teen suicide rates have skyrocketed since 2007, and some research has begun to correlate that with the rise of algorithmic, for-profit social media. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok have become central to teenagers social lives, and it's probably not an accident.
Today, Alexis Spence has made a full recovery from her eating disorder, and with her mom Kathleen, has become an advocate for social media reform, especially through legal action. Alli and Lindsey talk with them, along with their lawyer, Matt Bergman, who co-founded the Social Media Victims Law Center. When suing Meta on behalf of families, his legal approach comes from product liability: If tech companies know their products are addictive and harmful to children and choose not to address that, they should be held accountable.
Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1P
Join the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1p
Join the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/
Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.com
Call the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
01 This Wildly Popular True Crime Podcaster Has a Secret Double Life | Jack Rhysider | Darknet Diaries
Introducing: INFLUENCE with Matt Silverman
Hiatus
282 3 GIRLS 1 PODCAST
281 How Medievalists Went From Dusty Libraries to Online Influencers
280 What Is the Best Christmas Movie? (Correct Answers Only)
279 How to Start a Fight in the "Golden Girls" Fandom
278 The Most DAY OFF Day of the Year
277 What President Biden's Executive Order on AI Means for the Internet's Future
276 A CAPTCHA for Ignorance
275 The Explosive Growth of Computer Keyboard Mod Culture (with Hipyo Tech)
274 Regular Dumb or Dangerous Dumb?
273 Will AI Supercharge or Destroy Wikipedia As We Know It?
272 In Which We Try Very Hard to Not Talk About the Middle East
271 Wikipedians Are at War Over the Inclusion of Roads and Highways
270 The Greatest TV Theme Song Ever Written, According to Science*
269 How "Bama Rush" TikTok Became a Bizarre Social Media Reality Show
Creating "Positive Peer Pressure" With Study Streamers [ENCORE]
268 How Virtual Worlds Became a Safe Space for Non-Human Identities (Toy Dragon)
267 A Big Announcement and the Independent Future of 2G1P!
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The History of Literature
ReMade
Rocketship.fm
Creator Science
Green Eggs and Dan