​​​​​Keeping Our Kids Safe Online​​

Reflections from a bereaved mother

Intro from Jon Haidt:

At the After Babel Substack, we want to bring you many perspectives on the sudden transformation of childhood and society wrought by technological change in the past 20 years. Earlier this week, we brought you the perspective of a Facebook insider and whistleblower, Arturo Béjar, who identified a chronic threat to children on Instagram—sexual solicitation—which 13% of teen Instagram users experience in a typical week. Arturo documented Facebook’s failure to do much of anything about the problem. He also proposed specific actions to make Instagram, or any other platform, safer for teens. 

Today, we have a powerful post from the other side of the screen—the end user, or, rather, the mother of an end user. The harm this time came through Snapchat—more specifically from the app YOLO, which was integrated into Snapchat and which seems like it was designed to foment anonymous gossip, reputational destruction, cruelty, and cyberbullying. (Snapchat discontinued its association with YOLO in response to Kristin’s lawsuit.) 

Image. Kristin Bride

Social media in its current formulation—with no age-gating, almost no protections for children, and limited legal liability for the companies—is a severely defective consumer product. In any other industry, a consumer product harming so many children would be pulled from the market and forced to improve safety before being allowed back on sale. At the very least, laws would be passed to keep it away from minors. Kristin has joined forces with other bereaved parents to advocate for such reforms, particularly for two of the most important bills currently being considered in the US Congress: The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA, which requires social media companies to have a Duty of Care when they are designing products and features for users under the age of 16) and the updated version of COPPA 2.0 (which would strengthen protections related to the online collection, use and disclosure of personal information through age 16.) She asks for help from all of us, at the end, in supporting these bills.

Here is Kristin’s story.

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As a mother of two active teen boys, ages 19 and 16, nothing could have prepared me for the morning of June 23, 2020. I woke up early while my family slept to do research on my kitchen computer. I walked by my youngest son Carson’s room and saw that the door was cracked open, and he wasn’t in his bed. I thought nothing of it as Carson often slept upstairs in our loft when he had a hard time sleeping.   

The previous night was wonderful. Carson had just come home from his first summer job making pizzas, which he had worked so hard to get. He was happy and wrote his upcoming work schedule on the kitchen calendar. We celebrated Carson's first real job and anticipated a great summer. 

As I went to work on my computer, I glanced down at my phone. Our family charged our phones in the kitchen, far from our bedrooms. I saw something so shocking that adrenaline instantly pulsed through my veins. It was a text message from Carson to me, his older brother, and his father, who were both peacefully sleeping. All I had to see was the word “suicide.” I leaped up from my computer chair and ran to the house's other side. I didn’t have to go far, as the door to the garage was strangely cracked open and the light was on. When I stepped into the garage, I found Carson’s lifeless body hanging from our garage ceiling.  

​​It felt like my mind had left my body, and I was moving through an altered reality. People had always talked about full-body shock caused by extreme trauma, but I had never experienced this. What had gone so wrong overnight? What  happened to Carson that made him believe  life was not worth living?

Image. The Bride family. From left: Kristin, Tom, Carson, and Jack.

​We quickly learned through the school community that Carson had been cyberbullied by his high school “Snapchat friends,” who were using anonymous apps to hide their identities. Carson had received nearly a hundred harassing, threatening, and sexually explicit messages in the weeks leading up to his death. Carson had experienced some in-school bullying, which he always told us about, and we reported it to the school administration, who handled it. When Carson’s school went to online learning, I felt some relief in that I had my sons at home, safe from the drama that happened when school was in session. I could not have been more wrong. 

Shortly before his death, Carson reached out to a smaller group of classmates and asked them to come visit him at work and pick up a pizza. He was proud that he had gotten a job and he wanted to see some of his “friends” after months of COVID isolation. The anonymous responses that Carson received back were awful and cruel. We are convinced that this was the “final straw,” and my beautiful boy died helpless, hopeless, and humiliated. 

We were conservative parents with technology. Carson did not have a smartphone until 8th grade, a very old model with no apps. We had hoped that it would stay that way, but when he reached high school, he begged for Snapchat because that was the way all the kids connected. We had no idea that Snapchat had integrated anonymous apps onto its platform. Although we kept a watchful eye on our kids' phones, social media companies, with their ever-changing features, made it virtually impossible for parents to keep up.  

It was 2020, and books like The Anxious Generation were not out then. Very likely, researchers were still pondering the exponential increase in anxiety and depression that we now know is—in part—linked to teen social media use. We were not perfect parents, but when I read Jonathan Haidt’s suggested reforms (e.g., no smartphones until high school, no social media until 16) to change the “collective norm,” we had covered almost all of them.   

We had frequent conversations about all that could go wrong online at the dinner table. Never ask for or send nudes, and never type something online that you wouldn’t want on a billboard with your name and face next to it. We emphasized that these mistakes are preventable and will follow you in life. I am proud to say that Carson followed these rules even when his abusers were being so cruel. He asked them to swipe up and identify themselves to talk things out in person, but no one ever did. His fellow student “catfishers” taunted Carson to send nudes, yet he held strong to his conviction, “I don’t do that.”   

Carson had severe ADHD, so I was, for much of his life, a “helicopter parent.” I tried to keep him safe. I kept him from running into the street; I made sure that he had the appropriate school accommodations. But as he became a teen, I knew I needed to loosen my grip, so I actively sought counseling to help me back off. I certainly made mistakes, but I did everything I could to be the best parent to Carson.  

So, what happens when you do everything “right” and tragedy still strikes? One might think that my attitude toward Jonathan Haidt’s four foundational reforms might be met with skepticism. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth. By waiting for technology and social media, my boys were protected from the first generation of digital disasters in their K-8th school when smartphones became the popular “gift” in the school’s affluent community in 2012-2015.   

In 2012, a 9-year-old in my son’s 4th-grade class bragged that he had a “better phone than Carson’s mom” when I volunteered in the classroom. Trained at an early age, this child learned to use his phone as a weapon and became a chronic cyberbully in middle school. My older son was lucky. He was not included in the viral videotape of a student with an intellectual and developmental disability masturbating in a bathroom stall during lunch. My younger son did not receive the nude photos of a female classmate that were sent to his 7th-grade classmates. (The young girl ended up leaving the school in shame and has not fully recovered from the incident.) Parents who worry their children will be “left out” by not having cutting-edge technology should consider these examples and what their children are missing out on. I am certainly thankful that my sons were excluded from this online trauma by their young, impulsive classmates. Sadly, I understand that these incidents have become​​ the norm in many schools, making it difficult for school counselors and administrators to focus on education.​ ​ 

​​But as much as we need to change the norm around handing out smartphones to children, we also need to look to the source of the harm: the social media companies themselves. My journey from intense grief to advocacy has led me straight to the dangerous product designs that social media companies are using to capture young users' attention. I’ve realized that the more online teen drama that social media companies enable, the longer these companies can keep kids online. Engagement is gold for them. They collect our children’s attention and sell it to the advertisers, who are their real customers. 

The companies will not change on their own 

The anonymous app used to cyberbully Carson—YOLO—lured young kids into thinking that they would be safe with a “pop-up” screen that stated, “No bullying. If you send harassing messages to our users, your identity will be revealed” and “You will be banned for inappropriate usage.”  In the weeks following Carson’s death, I ​reached out to YOLO on four separate occasions asking them to follow their own policies and “reveal and ban” Carson’s tormentors. I was ignored every time, which fueled my anger and, more importantly, my desire to become a vocal social media reform advocate. 

I am not alone in this work. Tragically, I advocate with many other parents who have also lost their children to social media harms: deadly online challenges, sextortion, and overdose deaths caused by fentanyl-laced drugs purchased and delivered over social media, to name just a few. We are committed to spreading awareness and advocating for legislation and accountability so that no other family is forced to experience our pain. Many parents think that these things will never happen to their kids. We thought that too. But the statistics are staggering: Nearly half of teens have been cyberbullied, and victims of cyberbullying are more than twice as likely to engage in self-harm than their non-victim peers. A study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate—where the researchers created a variety of fake accounts—found that TikTok served pro-eating disorder content to these accounts within 8 minutes and suicide content within just 2. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported over 12,500 cases of financial sextortion in 2023, taking place via major social media platforms, but of course, the vast majority of sextortion cases are never reported.

Ultimately, the only way I could get the social media companies’ attention was to file a National Class Action Lawsuit against Snapchat and the anonymous apps they integrated into their platform. ​​ After our lawsuit was filed in 2021 (a year after Carson’s suicide), Snapchat immediately removed the anonymous apps from their platform and later changed their policy to permanently ban anonymous apps and features from Snapchat because they could not “mitigate harms at an acceptable level.”   

I am happy that they did this. But here’s the thing: It has been known for over a decade that anonymous apps increase the risk of cyberbullying and suicides, as witnessed by Formspring.me, Ask.fm, Secret, Sarahah, and Yik Yak. So why in the world didn’t Snapchat look into these risks before they allowed these dangerous apps to connect with their platform of 350 million young users?  

​​The answer is that they simply had no incentive to.​     ​​ 

Congress needs to act now

​​​Under current law, there is no Duty of Care requiring social media companies to consider children's safety when designing their apps. Unlike any other industry in America, social media companies are completely unregulated and have immunity from lawsuits under a 28-year-old law known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This very dangerous combination has created what we see today, a multi-billion dollar industry marketing harmful products to children without any accountability.   

This is where the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) comes into play. KOSA would require social media companies to prevent and mitigate online harms like social media addiction and cyberbullying, along with algorithms promoting suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, and certain unlawful products. KOSA has bipartisan support in  the Senate, with nearly 70 co-sponsors, and has recently been introduced in the House. KOSA would force social media companies to address the wide range of serious and often deadly harms that children experience online. 

Congress has a responsibility to keep our children safer online—we parents cannot do this alone. We need legislation like KOSA because Big Tech has repeatedly demonstrated that without law or lawsuits to restrain them, they will choose profit over the mental health and safety of our children every time. 

Complex problems are not often solved with linear solutions. They require involvement—from teens and parents to schools and governments—and cooperation to address the challenge from different angles. There is not one simple answer to change the trajectory of harm from these products. It will take courage, cooperation, and tenacity from parents to challenge the current “smartphone and social media norm” in their homes and schools, as well as legislation from Congress, to finally hold these companies responsible for their dangerous products. It is hard work, but we must do it.

If you are a parent who would like to voice your support for protecting kids online, simply click on this petition link to tell your lawmakers that you want them to pass KOSA and COPPA 2.0 (Child Privacy Protections). Urge Congress to Protect Kids Now!

To learn more about the organization Kristin works with, see

1. Parents for Safe Online Spaces

2. Issue One’s Council for Responsible Social Media