Should Teens Have Access to Disappearing Messages?
The stories are hauntingly similar: A teenager, their whole life ahead of them, buys a pill from someone on Snapchat. They think it’s OxyContin or Percocet, but it actually contains a lethal amount of fentanyl. They take it; they die. Their bereaved parents are left grasping for an explanation.
A 2021 NBC News investigation found more than a dozen such cases across the country. And now, parents of teens and young adults who died or were injured after purchasing drugs laced with fentanyl are turning to the courts, suing Snap over features that they believe made the deals possible—and allowed them to happen in secrecy.
Under federal law—in particular, a controversial section of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 known as Section 230—platforms typically aren’t responsible for the content people post on them. (Otherwise, social-media platforms would have to answer for isn’t the problem. Instead, they say that the very of Snapchat encourages criminal behavior—that the app was “developed and launched … for the express purpose of encouraging and enabling lewd, illicit, and illegal conduct.” Earlier this month, a California judge ruled that the case can proceed.
