OLYMPIA, Wash. — This story was originally published on mynorthwest.com.
For most residents in Thurston County, Dec. 19, 2024, was an ordinary Pacific Northwest winter day — chilly, mostly cloudy, with brief sun breaks in the afternoon.
But for the Ping family, that day remains forever dark. Their 16-year-old son, Avery Ping, died that Thursday evening from a drug overdose, according to doctors. The moments and images from that day continue to haunt them.
Home surveillance video footage appeared to show a drug transaction at the Ping’s home, court records stated. Avery approached a Toyota Prius at the end of his driveway, where he interacted with someone inside. Later that evening, video footage showed Avery outside the home with two other men. He appeared visibly impaired — stumbling, swaying, and speaking incoherently to a home security camera tracking his movements. Emergency crews were later seen arriving. Avery was transported to the hospital.
Avery believed he had purchased MDMA, or ecstasy, according to Avery’s family. However, they said medical staff told them Avery actually had a lethal dose of fentanyl in his system.
Avery’s family also told investigators the suspected dealer used Snapchat to sell drugs to their son and multiple other Olympia High School students. However, Avery’s story is far from isolated.
According to the Seattle-based Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC), similar tragedies unfold thousands of times each year. The group has filed more than 1,500 lawsuits against tech companies, including Snapchat, Meta (owner of Instagram and Facebook), and TikTok — accusing them of driving a youth mental health crisis through addictive algorithms and platform negligence. The consequences, they argue in court documents, include deadly drug overdoses, self-harm, and even suicide.
SMVLC’s work is also the focus of a documentary released in April, titled “Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media,” which dives into their emotional fight for grieving families and their journey from Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. to the courtroom, to convince tech companies to modify their algorithms.
“I think it resonates with every parent in America,” SMVLC Attorney Matthew Bergman told KIRO Newsradio. “Anyone who has kids experiences the consequences of social media addiction, and some of the parents experience very horrific consequences.”
One of the lawsuits highlighted in the documentary includes a landmark suit against Snapchat. Bergman told KIRO Newsradio, during the discovery phase — which is the pretrial phase where both parties are allowed to seek information from one another — SMVLC has uncovered emails and documents that corroborate previous whistleblowers’ claims that Snapchat uses psychologists, neurologists, and operant conditioning, which is a method that modifies a user’s behavior through rewards and punishments.
“They design platforms that are addictive to young people,” Bergman explained. “They know that their platforms are being used to facilitate drug deals, and they keep doing it.”
According to Pew Research, 95% of teens use social media, and a third said they are on it constantly. More than half of all teen girls report persistent sadness or hopelessness, according to the CDC.
The American Psychological Association and U.S. Surgeon General have both issued urgent warnings linking social media to rising rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation among youth.
In response, TikTok, Meta, and Snapchat have created robust safeguards for teenagers and parents to help them regulate the amount of time their kids spend on their platforms. In response to this story, all three tech companies sent KIRO Newsradio statements and links to those safeguards, which we have shared, in full, below.
However, Bergman argued, while the companies claim to support moderation, they do very little to actually enforce it.
“They’re trying to, on one hand, say you shouldn’t use it too much, and on the other hand, provide products that are psychologically and neurologically addictive,” Bergman said. “If they just turn off the algorithms and show kids what they want to see, not what they can’t look away from the mental health crisis that we would be seeing in our young people would not exist, and our kids would be healthier and safer, and we’d be on a much better trajectory.”
In January, the Olympia Police Department (OPD), along with a SWAT team, arrested a 33-year-old man for controlled substance homicide in the Ping case. While the case is still pending, court documents say it was “clear” the suspect’s Snapchat account was used for selling drugs.
In March, OPD sent a warning to families to beware of online, social media drug dealers targeting kids.
“They put an emoji in the search title or put in ‘drug dealer’ in the search title, and the app will use their location and let them know dealers within their location,” Olympia Police detective Patrick Hutnik said. “They pay with a Cash App and can have it delivered to their home.”
The Ping family is scheduled to take part in a panel discussion after a free screening of the documentary — which is based on reporting by Bloomberg Media — at West Seattle’s Admiral Theater on Aug. 28 at 6 p.m. Joining them will be SMVLC attorneys, policy experts, and a former Meta executive-turned-whistleblower. Here is a link for tickets to the screening.
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