- So big.

(chuckles) Owen and his grandfather, he got to wear a Super Bowl ring.

- [Isabella] Owen Zimmer grew up in Warwick and East Greenwich.

He was a shy kid with a passion for football and technology.

- He was great at gaming.

He and my dad built his gaming computer together.

- [Isabella] His mother, Amanda Zimmer, said technology helped him to connect socially.

But in 2021, his computer skills got him into trouble.

- We got a call from the school principal, his father and I did, and saying that we needed to come down to the school right away, that there was an issue.

- [Isabella] Zimmer says Owen and his friends had shut down his school's server.

Owen alone took the blame and was charged with 14 felonies.

- He became very depressed and just anxious.

He didn't want to be seen.

You know, he thought that everyone at school, between teachers and administration and other kids, like, hated him.

- [Isabella] He quit the football team and instead spent hours a day playing video games and using social media.

- He pretty much the next year in his room.

- [Isabella] Zimmer worried about her son isolating and the number of hours he was online.

It's a concern for many parents today.

- You have platforms that have been constructed to maximize how much time young people spend on them.

- In his 2023 advisory, then surgeon general Vivek Murthy warned that the way social media is designed to engage could come at the cost of kids' mental health.

- And almost every conversation we have with young people about mental health, they bring up social media.

- This activity is called, what's going on in this photo?

- [Isabella] So we went to Woonsocket to see what high school students think.

Do you think social media is helpful or harmful to kids' mental health?

- I feel like social media is helpful if you're going through depression and you don't like to talk about it.

I feel like going on social media and listening to music or watching inspirational videos can help you overcome it.

- I can be with my friends and they'll just be staring at their phone on social media.

And then I'm just sitting there like, "I want to talk.

We barely see each other, like, get off the phone."

- On the positive side, you're able to connect with family, friends, and other people.

But on the negative side of it is that it can really affect your mental health.

I experience cyberbullying a lot, but now, like, I don't really care about it, to be honest, 'cause I am who I am, and people just think what they wanna think.

- [Isabella] Different kids, different experiences.

It's the subject of study for clinical psychologist Jacqueline Nesi.

- Social media encompasses a lot of different platforms.

It encompasses, within a given platform, a lot of different behaviors and experiences.

And of course some of those things are gonna be helpful and some of those things are gonna be harmful.

- What design elements do you find have a particular impact on the way kids use them?

- One thing that's important to understand about social media platforms is that everything that occurs on a social media platform is by design, right?

Like, every button, the defaults when we first open it up, the first thing we see, nothing's really happening by accident.

- [Isabella] Nesi's collaborator, clinical psychologist Anastacia Kudinova, says that kids already feeling down offline can face a domino effect online.

- They might be then more likely to spend more time paying attention to content that is consistent with their current emotional state.

And then unfortunately, many platforms use the algorithms that tends to feed similar content based on what you have just viewed.

So in that scenario, they might be stuck in a loop of unhelpful thoughts, kind of on a downward spiral.

- [Isabella] Amanda Zimmer saw her son struggle emotionally for about a year after getting in trouble.

But when started him at a new school, things seemed to get better.

- And it was just like, oh my gosh, like, you know, I see, like, you know, this brightness and this shine and this enthusiasm in my child again, - [Isabella] She planned a trip to Boston for the two of them so that she could introduce him to a favorite band.

- We had the best time before he went to bed.

He said, "Mom," he's like, "Do you think we could get tickets for the summer?"

He's like, "I know that they'll be expensive and stuff."

I'm like, "Don't worry about it.

We'll figure it out, we'll definitely go."

And I brought him to his dad's house the next afternoon.

He went to school Friday.

- [Isabella] And that evening, he took his own life.

He was 17 years old.

- It's like, still I can't believe it.

I feel like it's not real.

Like, I just can't imagine not seeing him again.

Like, we just went to the concert.

How's he gone?

- [Isabella] After his death, Zimmer began searching his social media accounts, looking for an explanation.

She found that he had entered a dark world online.

He followed influencers with anti-Semitic, racist, and pro-suicide content.

And on Discord, he had been messaging with two strangers for months, who encouraged suicide.

- I never, it's like, my kid's, like, smart, my kid's not gonna talk to some stranger online, like, that would never be my kid, like.

And it was.

- In the years since Owen's death, reports have found that rings of predators regularly use platforms like Roblox, Minecraft, and Discord to groom and exploit children, often soliciting sexual content and urging them to harm themselves or others.

How many other cases of suicides have you seen among families you've talked to and represented?

- Hundreds.

I feel like I know each one of those kids.

- [Isabella] Matthew Bergman is the founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center.

- We represent now over 4,000 parents around the country and are at the forefront of the battle to hold social media companies accountable.

- [Isabella] They are representing the Zimmers in a class action suit against multiple social media companies.

Bergman started the firm after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified to Congress.

- Facebook knows that its amplification algorithms, things like engagement-based ranking on Instagram, can lead children from very innocuous topics, all the way from just something innocent like healthy recipes to anorexia-promoting content over a very short period of time.

- Kids don't go online seeking maligned content.

They go online seeking material that is interesting to them.

But based on the design of these algorithms that are steering kids toward material not that they wanna see but what they can't look away from.

- Have you ever seen something on social media that you wish you hadn't seen?

- I have Twitter, but I don't go on it as much.

But, like, the thing is, like, when I first opened the app, it's just gore.

- When you say gore, you mean, like, violent and, like, bloody images?

Is that what you mean?

- Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

- Some guy, you know, himself, and it was, like, very publicly out there and then- - Like, sexual images?

- No, like- - Or, like, harming himself?

- Harming himself.

- Lately, I mean, on Instagram Reels, you can just, I can see people harming themself or somebody getting harmed.

I wouldn't want my own siblings seeing that.

- A lot of that content has been pretty, you know, readily accessible on these platforms.

I know some platforms have taken steps to try to limit that, but it really hasn't always been effective.

- [Isabella] But does viewing this content translate to real-life risks?

Suicide is complex and caused by many factors.

Nesi researched what social media behaviors were associated with suicide risk in real life.

She found that the amount of time kids spent on platforms didn't have a strong link, but for vulnerable kids, certain experiences did.

- That included viewing suicide-related content.

Being the victim of cyber bullying was also a factor that increased risk for suicide.

- [Isabella] In light of these concerns about safety, social media CEOs were asked to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year.

- Safety is built into everything we do.

It's essential to our mission and our business.

- We have around 40,000 people overall working on safety and security, and we've invested more than $20 billion in this since 2016, including around $5 billion in the last year alone.

- In Rhode Island, the state, City of Providence, and multiple school districts have filed suits against social media companies for harming kids.

And across the country, a flurry of new bills and laws have aimed at regulating kids' social media use.

And at home, families are looking to protect their kids online.

What recommendations do you have for parents?

- Parents need to carefully monitor what their kids are doing online.

At the same time, you have to also encourage kids to be open about what they're doing online.

- [Isabella] Nesi writes a popular parenting newsletter called "Techno Sapiens" with advice.

- The first thing I would say is, I think it's really important for parents to look at, outside of these technologies, what is going on in a child's life.

And then, I mean, the other thing I would say to parents, talk about it often (chuckles) with their kids.

It sounds like very simple advice, but come in, ask a lot of questions, and really listen.

And trying to kind of flip this from it's me the parent against you the child, and more like me the parent and you the child together against the draw of some of these technologies.