Snapchat lawsuit alleges social media platform promotes child sexual exploitation

Torrez notes that the lawsuit against Snapchat follows an undercover investigation into Snapchat activity by the New Mexico Department of Justice.

Investigators found that Snapchat was widely used in extortion schemes, in which criminals convince minors to take sexually explicit photos and videos that they can then store and trade with others. In some cases, sexual predators demand that children give them money or more content to avoid being publicly exposed, the lawsuit said.

Criminals are also distributing scripts on the Snapchat platform itself, explaining how to exploit a child to post sexual content. Snap, Inc. has done nothing to stop this, Torrez said.

Much of Snapchat’s child exploitation content ends up on the Dark Web, sometimes in networks dedicated solely to trading in sexually explicit child material collected through Snapchat.

According to the New Mexico Department of Justice, the app poses a health and safety risk to young people in the state. The department cites an incident in which an 11-year-old New Mexico girl was raped by a man she met on Snapchat. The man has since pleaded guilty and has been sentenced to 18 years in prison.

The state accuses the company of failing to protect users, implementing features and algorithms that actually endanger young users and misleading the public about the safety of the app.

“Nearly every aspect of the service was designed to attract and addict young people. Moreover, Snap’s design and algorithmic recommendations openly promote and promote illegal sexual material involving children and facilitate sextortion and trafficking of children, drugs and weapons,” the lawsuit says. “It is this dichotomy that makes Snap’s conduct unfair, deceptive, and unconscionable.”

Concerns about children’s safety on social media

The lawsuit comes less than a year after social media site Omegle was forced to shut down amid a similar sex trafficking lawsuit. The site’s founder announced that Omegle would cease operations in November 2023 as part of a settlement agreement with the family of an 11-year-old girl who was blackmailed and harassed into sending sexually explicit material to an adult man.

The site’s algorithm had connected the two via video chats often used to send sexually explicit material, but without adequate age-verification software. The New Mexico lawsuit accuses Snapchat of lacking the same age checks.

Additionally, a group of states filed a lawsuit last year against Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, over social media addiction. They allege that the company deliberately uses features that they know will get children and teens hooked on the services, leading to increased participation that can have serious mental health consequences, state attorneys general allege.

The lawsuit also accuses Meta of unlawfully collecting the personal information of millions of children without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

The sexual exploitation claims also come as the companies face a number of other social media addiction lawsuits brought by families. Each lawsuit alleges that the platforms are intentionally designed to manipulate and maximize users’ time and engagement, as well as the type of content they view.

The lawsuits allege that these tactics cause addictive and self-destructive behavior in teens, resulting in anxiety, depression, eating disorders and psychological damage that has led to suicide attempts or actual suicide, particularly in young girls.

Each of the major social media platforms is accused of ignoring the clear evidence of the harmful effects of their behavior, thus refusing to do anything to prevent the addiction and emotional distress, because it would have a direct impact on the profits generated.