‘Snapchat Is the Gun That’s Delivering the Bullet to Our Children.’ Inside a Social Media Safety Rally Outside Snapchat HQ

On a muggy Friday afternoon, over a dozen parents who have lost children to drug overdose or suicide marched to Snap Inc.’s Santa Monica headquarters to make their grievances against the social media company heard.

Numerous guardians took the mic and shared horrifying stories of finding their teenaged children dead in their own home after taking their own lives because of bullying on the app, or overdosing on illicit fentanyl obtained from drug dealers on Snapchat. The grieving parents carried bright yellow signs designed to look like Snapchat friend codes, with faces of their dead children in the center. Each poster displayed the date the child passed and noted they were “forever 17,” or the age when they died. They also had a slogan: “Snapchat is an accomplice to my murder.” The ages of the dead children ranged from 14 to 19 years old.