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.
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[Encore Episode] 121 Gone Wild Audio (February 24, 2020)
172 Video Game Speedrunners (with world-record holder Niftski)
171 Ken M
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170 #FreeBritney
Introducing "Table Flipping"
169 Why the Creator of Nyan Cat Could Have Made Millions, But Didn't
168 Dogecoin and the Decentralized Dance Party
167 Ships of the Northern Fleet
166 How 'Blaseball' Fans Help Create the Game They Love
165 Consensus-Based Reality: How Blockchain Communities Could Change the World
164 Why Disinformation Spreads So Quickly in Online Communities
163 The_Donald
[Encore Episode] 111 @MugJerry and the Quest for Instagram Justice (December 8, 2019)
162 Something Awful
161 Buy Nothing
160 How the Internet Is Changing Language (with Linguist Gretchen McCulloch)
159 Blasphemy Fetishes
158 COVID Long Haulers
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