ASTI, ITALY, June 17 (Reuters) – In just a few months, Irene Roggero Ugues saw her daughter Rossella’s behavior change as social media presented her with an ever-increasing stream of content related to self-harm, before the 12-year-old girl took her own life.
Only after Rossella’s death did Irene and her husband unlock her devices. They discovered that she had been using social media much more than they imagined, including maintaining a secret Instagram profile called “Just a dead pers0n”, with a zero in place of the “o”.
In September 2023, they said, Rossella began looking for depression-related content that reflected how she felt. Social media algorithms kept serving her this type of content, and just five months later she was dead.
“At a certain point, it seemed to have taken on a life of its own, growing 🏽 until it dominated the happy, sociable side of her — the most radiant part,” Irene told Reuters at a cafe in the center of Asti, her hometown in northern Italy.
Rossella’s parents are among several families in Italy who have taken legal action against Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, and its biggest social media rival, TikTok. In the first class action in Italy to directly challenge social media companies and their algorithms, families are seeking stricter limits on minors’ access and greater awareness of the risks.
Both companies deny the lawsuit’s allegations that their services are harmful to young people and say they take steps to protect young users by removing harmful content, limiting exposure to risky material and helping families manage their children’s accounts.
“We know that parents care about their teens’ safety online, which is why we’re constantly making changes to help protect them,” said a Meta spokesperson, citing its “Teen Accounts” and built-in protection features.
“We strongly disagree with these allegations, which ignore our long-standing commitment to supporting young people.”
TikTok said its efforts include strict enforcement of guidelines designed to protect users’ mental and behavioral health, adding that it removes more than 99% of content that violates these rules.
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“We also continue to invest in safety measures to diversify recommended content, block potentially harmful searches, and connect vulnerable users to support resources,” a TikTok spokesperson said, citing local suicide prevention helplines.
Asked specifically about the role Instagram may have played in Rossella’s case, Meta told Reuters it would not comment directly during the court proceedings, but that young people’s mental health is influenced by a wide range of factors. The impact of social media platforms depends on how they are used, the protective measures in place for users and the level of parental involvement, the company said.
A sudden illness
Speaking slowly and choosing her words carefully, Irene said Rossella’s tragedy unfolded like a sudden and devastating “illness” that left her parents powerless.
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Without the algorithm, she says, “the progression of her suffering — or psychosis, or whatever it was that I still can’t define — might have unfolded more naturally.”
Scrutiny of digital platforms is intensifying across Europe, with the UK announcing plans this week to ban social media for under-16s. In the United States, a court ruling found Alphabet’s Meta and Google negligent in designing platforms considered harmful to young people.
European Union regulators are stepping up enforcement of the Digital Services Act, putting pressure on online platforms to better protect minors and curb harmful content.
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“The aim is not to discard the benefits of social networks, but to remove the technological and marketing mechanisms that make them harmful to the most vulnerable users,” said lawyer Stefano Commodo, who is leading the case with the Italian parents association MOIGE.
Parents Can’t Keep Up: The Limits of Control
Parents say the protection measures offered by platforms are insufficient, noting that children can easily find online tutorials that show how to bypass filters or avoid time limits by switching devices.
“Monitoring social media use is a full-time job. It would require parents to dedicate all their time to it, and that is simply unrealistic,” said Valentina Muraglie, who sits on the board of the Italian Association of Large Families.
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His own son, Antonio, put aside his Harry Potter book collection and replaced reading with browsing social media when he was a teenager. Now, in his early 20s, he has difficulty reading in depth, which she attributes to social media algorithms that have stolen his attention.
“As soon as he had a cell phone in his hands, at 16, little by little the books started disappearing,” she told Reuters. “Within a few years, he stopped reading completely.”
The World Health Organization warns that problematic social media use — characterized by addiction-like behaviors — is on the rise among teenagers and is associated with lower well-being, poor-quality sleep and broader health risks.
Studies published in JAMA Paediatrics, a US medical journal, point to measurable differences in brain development among heavy social media users, especially teenagers whose brains are still developing.
The Italian lawsuit argues that social media platforms use reward mechanisms inspired by slot machines to foster addiction by repeatedly stimulating dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward.
“Each ‘like’ or notification triggers the release of dopamine, hooking users to the platform in a way that resembles addiction,” said Tonino Cantelmi, consultant for the plaintiffs and director of the School of Specialization in Cognitive-Interpersonal Psychotherapy in Rome.
The families who filed the lawsuit say brain imaging studies of social media users show activity in areas of the brain associated with addiction.
Asked about the scientific evidence regarding addiction presented in court, spokespeople for Meta and TikTok declined to comment on the litigation, but repeated their previous statements about the companies’ track record on mental health.
Some psychologists warn against drawing simplistic conclusions about the effects of social media on teenagers.
“The healthiest approach when dealing with teenagers is to accept that we are not prepared,” said Federico Tonioni, head of the Web Psychopathology Center at Gemelli Hospital in Rome.
He added that he could not conclude that his patients would suffer less in a world without social media, warning against over-reliance on parental control.
“If there is anything dangerous, it is control over children. Young people need to be heard. Control is not a healthy form of presence. The healthiest distance is trust.”
Irene Roggero Ugues said she joined the lawsuit to help ensure other parents are informed about the risks she only became aware of when it was too late to save Rossella.
“We underestimated certain risks and didn’t know they existed, but other people can still act. There’s no point keeping this to myself, and I don’t think Rossella would care.”
(Reporting by Sara Rossi in Asti, Giselda Vagnoni and Matteo Negri in Rome; additional reporting by Alex Fraser in Asti and Gabriele Pileri in Rome)
