From New Zealand to the courtroom: A Kiwi investigates big tech
Saturday, 21 February 2026
The screen is black.
A 911 operator asks what happened. A mother, frantic, is trying to give her son CPR.
“He blew his head off.”
The voice is Arkansas mother Jennie DeSerio. Her 16-year-old son, Mason Edens, had just died.
Mason had recently gone through his first breakup. Looking for comfort, he turned to TikTok, searching for motivational content to help him cope.
Instead, his mother says the platform’s algorithm fed him a stream of suicide videos - content that glorified self-harm and explained how to do it.
After burying her son, DeSerio decided to fight back. She filed a wrongful death lawsuit against TikTok’s parent company, represented by the Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC), a Seattle-based firm dedicated to holding social media companies accountable for harm to young users.
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Mason’s case is one of more than 1,600 now being brought against the world’s biggest social media platforms - part of a growing legal effort to argue the companies themselves, not just the content they host, are responsible for the damage their products cause.
His mother’s 911 call is featured in the documentary Can’t Look Away, which follows the families taking on big tech. The film draws heavily on the reporting of New York-based Kiwi investigative journalist Olivia Carville.
“We came to understand that this is a story of corporate misconduct really, and a story of corporate greed as well,” Carville told The Post.
“This is about big companies doing what they can to grow their profits, to grow their user base - and putting money ahead of children and ahead of their youngest users.”
The landmark legal battle against some of the most powerful companies in the world reached a critical moment this month in Los Angeles Superior Court, where the first case in a consolidated group of lawsuits went to trial.
The plaintiffs - more than 350 families and over 250 school districts - accuse the owners of Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat of knowingly designing addictive products that harm young people’s mental health. The companies deny the claims.
TikTok and Snap settled the first case, brought by a 20-year-old woman who said social media addiction began in primary school and contributed to severe anxiety and body image disorders.
Meta and Google, which own Instagram and YouTube, are defending the case which will be decided by a jury. It has already seen Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg testify under oath for the first time about child safety.
The case is significant because, for more than two decades, internet platforms have been largely shielded from liability by Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act, which protects companies from legal responsibility for user-generated content.
The new lawsuits take a different approach. Instead of focusing on what users post, they argue the harm comes from the design of the platforms themselves - their algorithms, engagement systems and business models.
It is a strategy developed by Social Media Victims Law Center founder Matthew Bergman, and it has opened a window into how the companies operate.
More than six million internal documents have been produced through the discovery process, and around 150 current and former employees have been deposed.
“It’s that discovery process that is going to enable us to have a public record,” Carville said.
“To understand what the companies knew and when they knew it - and what they did, or didn’t do, to protect kids.”
Carville, who started her career at The Press, did not set out to specialise in social media.
After reporting in New Zealand early in her career - including on the country’s disproportionately high youth suicide rate - she moved to the United States eight years ago to study business journalism at Columbia University.
She joined Bloomberg’s investigations team, where she was assigned to cover corporate wrongdoing.
“Immediately I thought - which companies are having the biggest impact on children, the most vulnerable in our society?”
Her answer was big tech.
One of the cases that shaped her reporting was that of Jordan DeMay, a 17-year-old American student who died by suicide after being “sextorted”.
DeMay had shared a nude photo on Instagram with someone he believed was a young woman. The account belonged to a scammer who threatened to send the image to his friends and family unless he paid money.
Within hours, he was dead.
Stories like DeMay’s helped form the foundation of Can’t Look Away- and reinforced for Carville the scale of the issue.
“The scary thing is we’ve allowed a generation of kids to become addicted, obsessed, immersed in social media on a daily basis,” she said.
“We’ve allowed these companies to run what is essentially a giant psychological experiment on a generation of children - with no control group. And we don’t yet know what the long-term consequences will be.”
Do you have something you want to share about big tech? Email amelia.wade@stuff.co.nz
The lawsuits build on a growing body of evidence that the platforms understand the risks their products pose.
In 2021, former Facebook employee Frances Haugen leaked tens of thousands of internal documents to regulators and The Wall Street Journal, which formed the basis of the Facebook Files investigation.
The reporting showed the company - now known as Meta - was aware its platforms could worsen body image issues, amplify harmful content and contribute to mental health problems among young users, yet continued to prioritise growth.
Zuckerberg said at the time the leaks were a “coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company”.
For plaintiff lawyers, the disclosures were a starting point.
“That’s what sparked the legal strategy,” Carville said. “To get to discovery, to unearth all the other documents that weren’t public - to enable us as a society to really understand how these companies have been operating.”
Experts featured in the documentary argue the business model itself drives harm.
Mitchell Prinstein, chief science officer at the American Psychological Association, says young users are competing against highly sophisticated systems designed to maximise engagement.
“They’re up against brilliant people who have invested billions of dollars to keep kids engaged for as long as possible,” he told Carville in one of her stories.
Algorithms often prioritise content that triggers strong emotional reactions - fear, anger or distress - because it keeps users online longer.
And the longer users stay, the more advertising they see.
That attention is the platforms’ primary source of revenue.
While the legal battle is unfolding in the United States, the political pressure is growing in New Zealand.
Carville, currently back home on maternity leave with her three-month-old son, travelled to Los Angeles last week to sit in court alongside affected families as Instagram head Adam Mosseri gave evidence that the platform was not “clinically addictive”.
From what she has seen through her reporting, she supports moves by governments - including New Zealand’s - to restrict social media access for younger teenagers.
She frames the issue not as taking something away from young people, but limiting companies’ access to developing brains.
Last year the Government faced mounting calls to introduce a social media age ban, but coalition politics complicated the response. National supports a ban for under-16s, while ACT does not.
Instead, a select committee inquiry examined online harm and child safety.
Its interim report found strong public support for further action but concluded that a ban alone would not be sufficient. It also recommended exploring the creation of an independent regulator.
Education Minister Erica Stanford has since confirmed the Government is working on a two-part response - one focused on age restrictions, and a second, more comprehensive framework that could include regulatory powers.
“Social media companies don’t give a damn about our kids,” Stanford has said.
An announcement is expected this year.
Media organisations and advocacy groups say the political debate reflects a broader shift in public sentiment.
Stuff owner and publisher Sinead Boucher said the issue was likely to feature prominently in the election campaign.
“This election year will see more families who have been harmed speak out and demand that politicians explain what they will do to protect New Zealanders and hold the tech giants accountable,” she said.
Lobby group B416, led by Auckland parents, has been campaigning for a minimum age of 16 for social media use.
Chief executive Nicole Green said the goal was not just regulation, but a cultural shift.
“As it stands, New Zealand is the Wild West when it comes to online protections for children,” she said.
Others remain cautious. Some researchers warn a ban could be difficult to enforce and risk isolating teenagers who rely on social media for connection and community.
The companies themselves argue stronger regulation is unnecessary.
Earlier this month, Meta’s global head of safety, Antigone Davis, travelled to Auckland to promote Instagram’s safety features and teen account settings. She told Stuff there were “better ways” than age bans, which she said young people could easily bypass.
“We have a long history of delivering safe, age-appropriate experiences,” she said.
Carville is sceptical of such assurances. After years covering the industry, she believes the companies’ public messaging often obscures the underlying business incentives.
She compares the moment to the early reckoning with another powerful industry.
“I can’t believe we once allowed children to smoke,” she said.
“What were we thinking?
“I think one day people will look back and ask the same question about social media.”