By Sara Rossi, Giselda Vagnoni and Matteo Negri
ASTI, Italy, June 17 (Reuters) - In the span of just a few months, Irene Roggero Ugues watched her daughter Rossella's behaviour change as social media fed her an increasing stream of self-harm content, before the 12-year-old died by suicide.
Only after Rossella's death did Irene and her husband unlock her devices. They found that she had been using social media far more than they had known, including maintaining a secret Instagram profile called 'Just
a dead pers0n' with a zero instead of an o.
In September, 2023, they said, Rossella began searching for depressive material which mirrored how she felt. Social media algorithms kept pushing it back to her, and just five months later she was dead.
"At some point, it seemed to take on a life of its own, growing until it overwhelmed the cheerful, sociable side of her — the brighter part," Irene told Reuters in a private room at a café in central Asti, her hometown in northern Italy.
Rossella's parents are among a number of families in Italy that have brought a lawsuit against Instagram-and-Facebook-owner Meta, and its biggest social media rival TikTok. In the first collective action in Italy to directly challenge social media companies and their algorithms, the families are seeking tighter limits on minors' access and greater awareness of 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 children's accounts.
"We know parents worry about the safety of their teens online, which is why we're consistently making changes to help protect teens," a Meta spokesperson said, citing its "Teen Accounts" and built-in safeguards.
"We strongly disagree with these allegations, which ignore our longstanding commitment to supporting young people."
TikTok said its efforts include strict enforcement of guidelines aimed at protecting users' mental and behavioural health, adding that it removes more than 99% of content that violates those rules.
"We also continue to invest in safety measures to diversify recommended content, block potentially harmful searches and connect vulnerable users with support resources," a TikTok spokesperson said, citing local suicide prevention help lines.
Asked specifically about the role that Instagram may have played in Rossella's case, Meta told Reuters that it would not comment directly during the litigation, but that young people’s mental health is shaped by a wide range of factors. The impact of social media platforms depends on how they are used, the safeguards in place to protect users, and the level of parental involvement, it said.
A SUDDEN ILLNESS
Speaking slowly and choosing her words carefully, Irene said Rossella's tragedy unfolded like a sudden, devastating "illness" that left her parents powerless.
Without the algorithm, she says, "the progression of her distress — or psychosis, or whatever it was that I still cannot define — might have unfolded more naturally."
Scrutiny of digital platforms is intensifying across Europe, with Britain announcing plans this week to ban social media for children under 16. In the United States, a U.S. ruling found Meta and Alphabet's Google negligent in designing platforms deemed harmful to young people.
European Union regulators are stepping up enforcement of the Digital Services Act, pressing online platforms to better protect minors and curb harmful content.
"The goal is not to dismiss the benefits of social media, but to remove the technological and marketing mechanisms that make it harmful to the most vulnerable users," said lawyer Stefano Commodo, who is leading the case with the Italian association of parents MOIGE.
PARENTS CANNOT KEEP UP: THE LIMITS OF CONTROL
Parents say safeguards provided by the platforms fall short, noting that children can easily find online tutorials showing 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 spend all their time doing it, and that is simply unrealistic," said Valentina Muraglie, who sits on the board of Italy's association of large families.
Her own son Antonio put aside his collection of Harry Potter books and replaced reading with scrolling as a teenager. Now in his 20s, he finds it hard to read in depth, which she blames on social media algorithms that sucked away his attention.
"Once he had a phone in his hand, at 16, little by little books started to disappear," she told Reuters. "Within a few years he stopped reading altogether."
The World Health Organization warns that problematic social media use - marked by addiction-like behaviour - is increasing among adolescents and is linked to lower well-being, poor sleep and broader health risks.
Studies published in JAM Paediatrics, a U.S. medical journal, point to measurable differences in brain development among heavy social media users, particularly teenagers whose brains are still developing.
The Italian case argues that social media platforms use reward mechanisms modelled on slot machines to foster dependency, by repeatedly triggering dopamine, a brain chemical linked to pleasure and reward.
"Each 'like' or notification triggers dopamine release, tying users to the platform in a way that resembles addiction," said Tonino Cantelmi, a plaintiffs' advisor and director of the School of Specialisation in Cognitive-Interpersonal Psychotherapy in Rome.
Families bringing the case say brain scan studies of social media users show activity in areas of the brain associated with addiction.
Asked about the scientific evidence on addiction presented in court, spokespeople from Meta and TikTok declined to comment on the litigation, while repeating their earlier comments on the companies' records on mental health.
Some psychologists caution against drawing simple conclusions about the effects of social media on adolescents.
"The healthiest approach when dealing with adolescents is to accept that we are unprepared," Federico Tonioni, head of the Web Psychopathology Centre at Rome's Gemelli hospital, said.
He added he could not conclude that his patients would suffer less in a world without social networks, warning against over-reliance on parental control.
"If there is something dangerous, it is control over children. Young people need to be listened to. Control is not a healthy form of presence. The healthiest distance is trust."
Irene Roggero Ugues said she joined the lawsuit to help ensure that other parents are made aware of risks that she did not learn about until after it was too late to save Rossella.
"We underestimated certain risks and didn't know they existed, but others can still act. There's no point keeping this to myself, and I don't think Rossella would mind."
(Reporting by Sara Rossi in Asti, Giselda Vagnoni and Matteo Negri in Rome, additional reporting by Alex Fraser in Asti and Gabriele Pileri in RomeWriting by Giselda VagnoniEditing by Adam Jourdan and Peter Graff)
