23SMCV00835

Assigned for all purposes to: Santa Monica Courthouse, Judicial Officer: Mark Young

Electronically FILED by Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles on 02/23/2023 09:35 AM David W. Slayton, Executive Officer/Clerk of Court, by M. Young II,Deputy Clerk

1 Laura Marquez-Garrett, SBN 221542

laura@socialmediavictims.org
2 SOCIAL MEDIA VICTIMS LAW CENTER
821 Second Avenue, Suite 2100
3 Seattle, WA 98104
4 Telephone: (206) 741-4862

5 Attorneys for Plaintiffs

6 [Additional counsel appear on signature page]

7 IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA

8 COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES
9 DIANA TRUJILLO, individually, and as CIVIL NO.
successor-in-interest to JUAN JIMÉNEZ
10
TRUJILLO, Deceased; JOHN LUJAN,
11 individually; PATTI LUJAN, individually, and
as successor-in-interest to LAUREN LUJAN, COMPLAINT
12 Deceased; REBEKAH BROWN, individually,
and as successor-in-interest to COLE BROWN,
13
Deceased; MARK LEONARDI, individually;
14 RAMONA LEONARDI, individually, and as
successor-in-interest to MICHAEL JURY TRIAL DEMAND
15 LEONARDI, Deceased; KYLE WILKINSON;
SARAH WILKINSON, individually, and as
16 successor-in-interest to DYLAN MOORE,
17 Deceased; ROSE SMOAK, individually;
OLUSESI MAJEKODUNMI, individually, and
18 as successor-in-interest to MOSES “MALIK”
MAJEKODUNMI, Deceased; JACKIE
19
HUTCHINGS; TERRY HUTCHINGS,
20 individually, and as successor-in-interest to
KEVIN “ANDREW” HUTCHINGS, Deceased;
21 JASMINE ROBINSON, individually, and as
successor-in-interest to JAYLEN PENIX,
22 Deceased; JAMES POWELL, individually, and
23 as successor-in-interest to ALLIE HIGDON,

24 Plaintiffs,
25
v.
26
SNAP, INC.,
27
Defendant.
28

COMPLAINT 1
 1 In these digital public spaces, which are privately owned and tend to be run
for profit, there can be tension between what’s best for the technology
2 company and what’s best for the individual user or for society. Business
models are often built around maximizing user engagement as opposed to
3 safeguarding users’ health and ensuring that users engage with one another
in safe and healthy ways. . . . Technology companies must step up and take
4 responsibility for creating a safe digital environment for children and youth.
Today, most companies are not transparent about the impact of their
5 products, which prevents parents and young people from making informed
decisions and researchers from identifying problems and solutions.
6
Protecting Youth Mental Health, The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory (Dec. 7, 2021).
7
COME NOW PLAINTIFFS Diana Trujillo, John and Patti Lujan, Rebekah Brown, Mark
8
and Ramona Leonardi, Kyle and Sarah Wilkinson, Rose Smoak and Olusesi Majekodunmi, Jackie
9
and Terry Hutchings, Jasmine Robinson, and James Powell and bring this action for wrongful
10
death and survivorship against Defendant Snap, Inc. (“Snap”) for the death of Juan Jiménez
11
Trujillo, Lauren Lujan, Cole Brown, Michael Leonardo, Dylan Moore, Moses “Malik”
12
Majekodunmi, Kevin “Andrew” Hutchings, Jaylen Penix, and Allie Higdon.
13
14 Plaintiffs bring the following claims against Snap:

15 1. Strict liability based upon Defendant Snap’s defective design of its Snapchat social

16 media product, which renders such product not reasonably safe for users, especially minor users,

17 and failure to provide adequate warnings to minor users and their parents about the danger of

18 mental and physical harms arising from foreseeable use of the Snapchat product, including that it

19 is a widely used conduit for drug dealers to promote the sale of fentanyl-contaminated drugs to

20 vulnerable minors and young adults.

21 2. Common law negligence arising from Defendant Snap’s unreasonably dangerous
22 social media product and its failure to warn of such dangers, as well as negligent infliction of
23 emotional distress due to Defendant Snap’s extreme and outrageous conduct and reckless disregard
24 for the probability of causing severe emotional distress.
25 3. Unjust enrichment based on the direct benefits Defendant Snap received.
26 4. Invasion of privacy due to Defendant Snap’s frustration of and intrusion upon
27
Plaintiffs’ fundamental parental rights.
28
5. Public nuisance due to Defendant Snap’s knowing creation and allowance of a

COMPLAINT 2
 1 harmful condition, and unreasonable interference with health, safety, peace, and comfort.

2 6. Civil aiding and abetting due to Defendant Snap’s dangerous design, and decision

3 to continue providing substantial assistance to Snapchat Drug Dealers in the interest of increasing

4 its own engagement and profits.

5 I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

6 A. Fentanyl Poisoning of Minors and Young Adults is a National Crisis

7 1. This case is about 9 children who believed that Snapchat was a safe and silly social

8 media product for kids so decided to open a Snapchat account. Instead of providing a safe and

9 silly product and services, however, Snap’s design and programming decisions created harmful

10 dependencies on its product, identified and targeted these children with drug-themed content and

11 drug menus, and affirmatively connected them (and incentivized them to accept such connections)

12 to several Snapchat Drug Dealers. Because of Snapchat, these dealers were able find these children

13 and deliver drugs – often to their bedroom windows and front doors – with impunity. Snapchat

14 became aware of these Snapchat Drug Dealers and Drug Cartel connections, and the ever-

15 increasing number of young Snapchat users being exposed to Snapchat Drug Dealers through and

16 because of its product designs well before any of these children began using Snapchat; while these

17 children and their families had no idea how Snap was operating its product or that it was knowingly

18 putting it youngest users in harm’s way.

19 2. This is a case about the Snapchat Drug Cartel and how a mainstream social media

20 product facilitates – and profits from – designing a product that markets and sells lethal drugs to

21 its young users. America is battling a deadly drug crisis and what makes this crisis different is

22 that, for the first time in our Nation’s history, children, teens, and young adults are dying at the

23 same, if not greater, rates than their adult counterparts.1

24 1
See, e.g., https://adai.uw.edu/new-report-youth-fentanyl/ (“The data are stunning … Historically, deaths involving
heroin and prescription opiates were big deals, but the fentanyl trends are even worse. What is profoundly different
25 is the years of life lost among people who overdose at age 20 or 25, in contrast with people who are 45 or 50.”);
https://www.statnews.com/2022/04/12/driven-by-fentanyl-rates-of-fatal-teen-overdoses-doubled-in-2020/ (“After
26
staying flat for a decade, the overdose death rate among U.S. adolescents nearly doubled from 2019 to 2020 … [and]
27 [t]he reasons do not include a surge of children in this group – ages 14 to 18 – using drugs, researchers said.”);
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/teen-overdose-deaths-spiked-low-drug-use-rcna23103 (“… nearly 5
28 out of every 100,000 adolescents ages 14 to 18, or more than 950 teens, died of an overdose in 2020. More than 70

COMPLAINT 3
 1 3. This begs the question of how and why dealers are obtaining access to children in

2 the first place, and the answer is Snapchat! Even though Snapchat is not the most popular social

3 media app among teens – it places fourth2 – it facilitates the overwhelming majority of lethal,

4 counterfeit prescription drug sales involving social media and children, teens, and young adults.

5 4. In a recent letter to the Justice Department, the National Crime Prevention Council

6 (NCPC) singled out Snapchat as a product “of particular concern” when it comes to the sale of

7 Fentanyl to young Americans.3 NCPC Executive Director Paul DelPonte said,

… that Snapchat is a “digital open-air drug market” that allows dealers to advertise
8
and distribute fake pills to tweens and teens who are unsuspecting and that they
9 may be lured into obtaining dangerous and deadly drugs.

10 “The platform gives drug dealers the ability to hide behind encrypted technology
and posts that disappear from public view within 24 hours or less,” DelPonte said.
11 “This is not protection of free speech. It is aiding and abetting of the worst kinds of
12 criminal acts.”

13 5. Plaintiffs allege that Snapchat is involved in more than 75% of all fentanyl deaths

14 among teens (ages 13 to 17) over the last three years and where those fentanyl deaths linked a drug

15 dealer selling over social media. In fact, based on what Plaintiffs know now as compared to when

16 the first of these complaints was filed, that number is likely more than 90% or even 95%. Snapchat

17 is involved in the vast majority of these drug cartel sales and deaths, despite the fact that there are

18 other social media products that provide direct messaging access to children and that are equally

19 or more popular than Snapchat among American teens ages 13 to 17. The prevalence of Snapchat’s

20 involvement in these deaths has nothing to do with its popularity among teens, and everything to

21 do with how Snap designs, markets, distributes, programs, and operates its products.

22 percent of those deaths were from illicit fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. That portion rose to 77% among the
nearly 1,150 teens who died of an overdose from January to June 2021.”); https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-
23 11509745/Americas-fentanyl-crisis-UNCOVERED-drug-causes-death-seven-minutes-took-over.html (more deaths
by overdose in the U.S. in 2022 than “gun and motor vehicle deaths combined” and, according to the CDC “fentanyl
24
and its chemical copycats caused about two thirds of those deaths — often young people who thought they were taking
25 something less powerful.”).
2
Snapchat places fourth in terms of overall popularity (https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-
26 social-media-and-technology-2022/ (a Pew Research released in August 10, 2022 places Snap in fourth place among
social media products and teens ages 13 to 17, behind YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram)), and behind TikTok and
27 YouTube in terms of time spent per day on average (https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/07/tiktok-is-crushing-youtube-
in-annual-study-of-kids-and-teens-app-usage/ (annual reporting, published in 2023, among ages 4 through 18).
28 3
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/national-crime-prevention-council-claims-snapchat-used-sell-fentanyl-
kids.

COMPLAINT 4
 1 6. The number of American children injured and killed by the Snapchat product in

2 this manner has continued to climb, unabated despite Snap’s representations to consumers and the

3 U.S. Government that it is expending every resource and doing everything in its power to make its

4 product safer. Snap is not expending every resource and is not taking steps it knows would have

5 actual impact on reducing these deaths and injuries because it does want to risk its popularity

6 among Snap’s users or its astronomical revenue.

7 B. Snap’s Social Media Product is Contributing to the Fentanyl Death Epidemic

8 Among American Youth

9 7. Snap’s product is specifically designed to attract both children and illicit adult

10 activity. Its foundational product feature is disappearing messages, which draws in both minors

11 interested in evading parental oversight and drug dealers interested in engaging with vulnerable

12 minors without detection. Snap is the only social media product that targets children while also

13 encouraging anonymity – a feature sought by every predator wanting to not get caught. Snap’s

14 marketing and appeal to children further provides dealers with an unlimited potential customer

15 base, while Snap’s geolocating features make those unlimited child users findable to dealers

16 passing through their locality. The self-destructing texting, expiring post, and secure data vault

17 features enable dealers to complete transactions without a trace, knowing that not even law

18 enforcement can access certain records. Snapchat’s hashing feature further makes it easy for users

19 interested in buying drugs to match with users seeking to sell. The hashing has an entire

20 nomenclature of symbols and words that Snap accommodates on user profiles while lethal drug

21 sales run amok.

22 8. In a recent letter to the Justice Department, the National Crime Prevention Council

23 (NCPC) singled out Snapchat as a product “of particular concern” when it comes to the sale of

24 Fentanyl to young Americans.4 NCPC Executive Director Paul DelPonte said,

… that Snapchat is a “digital open-air drug market” that allows dealers to advertise
25
and distribute fake pills to tweens and teens who are unsuspecting and that they
26 may be lured into obtaining dangerous and deadly drugs.

27
28 4
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/national-crime-prevention-council-claims-snapchat-used-sell-fentanyl-
kids.

COMPLAINT 5
 1 “The platform gives drug dealers the ability to hide behind encrypted technology
and posts that disappear from public view within 24 hours or less,” DelPonte said.
2 “This is not protection of free speech. It is aiding and abetting of the worst kinds of
criminal acts.”
3
9. Snapchat’s disappearing message feature is engineered to evade parental
4
supervision and law enforcement’s detection and acquisition of criminal evidence and was the
5
direct and proximate cause of the untimely and tragic death and injuries at issue in this Complaint.
6
10. Snap’s operational failures and related product defects further caused the death of
7
Juan Jiménez Trujillo, Lauren Lujan, Cole Brown, Michael Leonardo, Dylan Moore, Moses
8
“Malik” Majekodunmi, Kevin “Andrew” Hutchings, Jaylen Penix, and Allie Higdon – 9 children
9
who lived in 7 U.S. states, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and
10
Washington, and died over the course of almost three years – from February 2020 through
11
December 2022.
12
11. For example, Snap provides no stand-alone reporting mechanism, staffed email
13
address, or even a phone number for non-Snap users to report underage, dangerous, or violating
14
use of its social media product; while the Snap in-app mechanism for reporting dangerous users
15
and drug dealers is broken or otherwise defective; the Snap in-app mechanism for disabling known
16
dangerous accounts is broken or otherwise defective; and Snap’s mechanisms or methods for
17
responding to criminal investigations and warrants related to crimes on its app are broken or
18
designed in a manner that prioritizes engagement over user safety.
19
12. Snap’s products and policies often obstruct criminal investigations, including
20
circumstances in which Snap ignores, objects to, or otherwise delays responses to some criminal
21
warrants, all while Snap continues making its product available to identified drug dealers to market
22
and sell more deadly drugs to Snap users.
23
Snap’s failure to warn young users and their parents of these defects, deficiencies, and
24
inherent dangers – all known to Snap – further caused the death of Juan Jiménez Trujillo, Lauren
25
26 Lujan, Cole Brown, Michael Leonardo, Dylan Moore, Moses “Malik” Majekodunmi, Kevin

27 “Andrew” Hutchings, Jaylen Penix, and Allie Higdon and interfered with their parents’ ability to

28 protect them.

COMPLAINT 6
 1 13. Snap is widely accepted in the social media industry as having cornered the market

2 on teen and tween engagement. It is one of the three most popular social media products among

3 tweens, teens, and young adults in the United States, and Snap works hard to market to and target

4 this demographic – from product designs and features to commercials and merchandise to its logo.

5 Snap’s well-known logo is a ghost against a brightly colored background and some of the products

6 for which it is best known include silly photo filters and bitmoji (cartoons).

7
••••• ••
8 •••
••
•
9 • •• •
•••••
10
••••• •
11 • •••
•• • •• •
12 14. Snap currently estimates more than 93 million Snapchat users in the U.S., including

13 almost 18 million under the age of 18; but those numbers grossly underestimate the importance of

14 minors to Snap’s success – indeed, to its survival. For example, in the case of Snap’s primary

15 competitor, Instagram, roughly 74% of its teen users are “highly active,” meaning that they receive

16 more feed impressions than 90% of all Instagram users. Upon information and belief an even larger

17 percentage of Snap’s minor users meet the same criteria as it relates to Snapchat. Minor users are

18 responsible for an overwhelming percentage of Snap’s revenue. Snap needs children and teenagers

19 to survive in the competitive social media market.

20 15. Snap promotes Snapchat as a safe and fun product for kids and publishes blogs with

21 Snap executives who talk about their own children and the importance of safety. Snap’s

22 representations in this regard are untrue. Snap is not a safe product for minors, and on information

23 and belief some of Snap’s own executives and designers prohibit use of Snapchat by their children.

24 16. Plaintiffs allege, based on information and belief, that from 2020 through 2022,

25 Snapchat was involved in over 75 percent of the fentanyl poisoning deaths involving children

26 between the ages of 13 to 18 and involving a dealer who was connected with the child via social

27 media. For context, this means that Snap was responsible for more of these needless deaths –

28 thousands of American children – than all other social media products combined.

COMPLAINT 7
 1 17. Snap’s products have encouraged, enabled, and facilitated the illegal and deadly

2 drug sales of counterfeit pills containing lethal doses of fentanyl to minors and young adults.

3 18. Thousands of young Snapchat users have been harmed and/or died from Snap

4 handing the reins of its app over to drug dealers – which Snap has done knowingly and, to date,

5 without remorse. Snap engineered this crisis through its marketing, design, and distribution

6 decisions, its refusal to issue warnings or act even as to many known Snapchat Dealers, and its

7 repeated prioritization of profit over human life. Meanwhile, Snap is lackadaisical about the

8 problem; pretending to be a young startup with a simple publishing platform, not the mature multi-

9 billion-dollar corporation governing a complex family of products that exert great power and

10 control over a generation of kids that it is. For years, Snap has ignored the harms its product was

11 causing, as well as pleas from parents to make simple changes to its product – including

12 preservation of data for law enforcement and compliance, front end warnings about the illegality

13 of drug sales and purchases and the prominence of fentanyl in pills being sold as prescription

14 narcotics via the Snapchat app, and others – which changes would have saved the lives of at least

15 some of the children named in this Complaint, and countless others.

16 19. The following are just a few Snapchat fatalities, which images were collected and

17 published by the 501(c)(3) organization, Stop the Void,

18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25 20. Plaintiffs are the parents of Juan Jiménez Trujillo, Lauren Lujan, Cole Brown,

26 Michael Leonardo, Dylan Moore, Moses “Malik” Majekodunmi, Kevin “Andrew” Hutchings,

27 Jaylen Penix, and Allie Higdon, all of whom died because of Snap’s defective and dangerous

28 product.

COMPLAINT 8
 1 21. As minors, Juan Jiménez Trujillo, Lauren Lujan, Cole Brown, Michael Leonardo,

2 Dylan Moore, Moses “Malik” Majekodunmi, Kevin “Andrew” Hutchings, Jaylen Penix, and Allie

3 Higdon all became avid users of Snapchat and Snap is responsible for their deaths and the

4 nightmares inflicted on their families.

5 22. Plaintiffs did not discover, and in the exercise of reasonable diligence could not

6 have discovered, the harms Snapchat caused their minor children until late-2021 at the earliest and,

7 even then, Snap continues to conceal material information about its product, the harms it causes,

8 and how it is causing those harms. One example can be found in Snap’s testimony before the

9 Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, dated October 26, 2021.5 Additional examples

10 include Snap’s most recent public statements about the Fentanyl crisis, and its efforts to blame all

11 social media products, despite its knowledge that Snapchat is the deadliest by far. In short, there

12 are still millions of Americans who suffered these Snapchat-caused harms but have no way to

13 discover Snap’s role – despite reasonable diligence – because of Snap’s own active concealment

14 and refusal to provide complete transparency to researchers and government agencies. Snap is the

15 only one with actual knowledge of its design, operation, and programming decisions, and defects.

16 23. This lawsuit holds Snap and its leadership morally and legally responsible for the

17 product Snap designed and operational choices Snap made at the expense of Plaintiffs and their

18 children.

19 II. PARTIES

20 24. Plaintiffs did not enter into a User Agreement or other contractual relationship with

21 Snap in connection with their child’s use of the Snapchat social media product and allege that any

22 such agreement is further void under applicable law as unconscionable and/or against public

23 policy. Plaintiffs additionally disaffirm all “agreements” into which their child may have entered

24 with Snap concerning their child’s use of the Snapchat social media product, and such

25 disaffirmation was made either prior to their children reaching of the applicable age of majority in

26
5
27 See, e.g., https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2021/10/protecting-kids-online-snapchat-tiktok-and-youtube (in-
person proceedings); https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/0AACA9BA-49C8-4AC3-8C2E-
28 E62ACC3F73BC (Snap’s written testimony, misrepresenting or omitting material information as the way Snap’s
products work and harms to children arising therefrom).

COMPLAINT 9
 1 their state of residence or within a reasonable time thereafter under the facts and circumstances of

2 this case. As such, Plaintiffs are not bound by any arbitration, forum selection, choice of law, or

3 class action waiver set forth in any such “agreement.”

4 25. Defendant Snap, Inc. is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business

5 in Santa Monica, CA. Defendant Snap owns and operates the Snapchat social media platform, an

6 application that is widely marketed and placed into the stream of commerce by Snap and which

7 Snap makes available to users throughout the United States.

8 26. At all times relevant hereto, Defendant Snap Inc. was acting by and through its

9 employees, servants, agents, workmen, and/or staff, all of whom were acting within the course and

10 scope of their employment, for and on behalf of Snap Inc.

11 III. JURISDICTION AND VENUE

12 27. This Court has personal jurisdiction over Defendant Snap Inc. because Snap Inc.

13 has its principal place of business in California and is “at home” in this State.

14 28. Venue is proper in Los Angeles County because Defendant Snap Inc. is

15 headquartered here.

16 IV. FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS

17 A. Snapchat Product History

18 29. Snapchat is an American social media company founded in 2011, by three Stanford

19 college students, Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown. Evan Spiegel, who thanks to

20 Snapchat, became the world’s youngest billionaire, remains CEO today.

21 30. Snap develops and maintains the wildly popular Snapchat, Spectacles, and Bitmoji

22 technology products, among others.

23 31. Snapchat, originally called Picaboo, began as a simple smartphone-based product

24 premised on disappearing messages, a feature that remains foundational to its popularity. The

25 founders developed the disappearing idea off their own pain point because they faced

26 condemnation and regret for a spate of horribly crude and misogynistic emails they sent within

27 their fraternity, which would be leaked years later. 6 They also wanted an easier way to convince

28
6
https://valleywag.gawker.com/fuck-bitches-get-leid-the-sleazy-frat-emails-of-snap-1582604137

COMPLAINT 10
 1 weary coeds to send them nudes. Months after its launch, Picaboo had amassed only 127 users7 so

2 the trio “pivoted” with a name change to Snapchat and began marketing to and targeting high

3 school students. Within a year, and with its new target audience of children and teens, Snapchat

4 grew to more than 100,000 users.

5 32. The Snapchat product is best-known for its self-destructing content feature, which

6 allows users to form groups and share posts or “Snaps” that disappear after being viewed by the

7 recipients. 8 The sender sets a dial for how long they want the recipient to be able to see the image

8 before it deletes and if the recipient screenshots the image, the sender gets a pop-up notification.
Snapchat was started at a time when everybody and their mom thought they were an
9
entrepreneur who could launch a successful social app. Facebook was where you
10 went for updates on family and friends, Instagram was beautiful photo content, and
Twitter was the conversation at a cocktail party. These three social giants dominated
11 most of the conversation, but they all played off of each other in terms of
functionality, and, most importantly, audience. However, Snapchat was able to
12
counterbalance the strengths of all three players and create a new social pipeline.
13
The norm of the internet age is to create platforms in which everything is saved—
14 everything is stored and documented digitally. Snapchat went the opposite direction…9
15 33. Since its inception Snap’s leadership designed and re-designed new product
16 features in what became an epic race with competing social media manufacturers to increase
17 popularity among America’s youth and secure the title of go-to app for tweens, teens, and young
18 adults. There is no question that Snap won the race with its Snapchat product and product
19 features.10
20 34. Snap is known within the industry for being an innovator whose ideas other
21 companies like Instagram steal. (“Many of the features we now see baked into every social app
22
23
24
7
25 https://frozenfire.com/history-of-snapchat/
8
https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-snap-generation-a-guide-to-snapchats-history/. Snap attributes much of its
26 popularity among “younger social media users” to this feature. See https://www.thestreet.com/technology/history-of-
snapchat (“in a 2013 interview with The Telegraph, Spiegel honed in on the real reason Snapchat was such a hit with
27 younger social media users – they didn’t want their social media history coming back to haunt them.”).
9
https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-snap-generation-a-guide-to-snapchats-history/
28 10
https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-snap-generation-a-guide-to-snapchats-history/ (by early 2015, “45% of
Snapchat’s users are under 25 [and] there are over 100 million users, nearing 200 million.”).

COMPLAINT 11
 1 originated from Snapchat.”)11

2 35. On March 2, 2017, Snap became a publicly traded company, with more than 200

3 million shares changing hands over the course of the day, accounting for roughly 10 percent of the

4 total volume of trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

5 36. As of October 2022, Snap had a market cap of 16.19 billion.

6 37. In 2021, Snap employed 5,661 people and made 4.12 billion in revenue.

7 38. By Q2 2022, Snapchat had 347 million daily active users worldwide.

8 39. An average of over 5 billion Snaps are sent every day.12

9 40. Snap says that users are on the app 30 times a day on average,13 though Snap’s

10 young daily active users check the app exponentially more than that and throughout all hours of

11 the day and night.

12 B. Snapchat Product Evolution and Features

13 41. The following is a product innovation timeline, illustrating Snap’s evolution over

14 time from a simple product to one with several different (and dangerous) product features,14

15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
11
26 https://www.visualcapitalist.com/timeline-looking-back-at-10-years-of-snapchat/; see also
https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/vanish-mode-instagram?amp (Instagram did not implement its Vanish
27 Mode feature until “late 2020,” and the feature is one that must be selected by the user, rather than the default).
12
https://thesocialshepherd.com/blog/snapchat-statistics
28 13
https://forbusiness.snapchat.com/blog/snapchatters-and-the-path-to-purchase-shopping-behaviors-on-snapchat
14
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/timeline-looking-back-at-10-years-of-snapchat/

COMPLAINT 12
 1
2 0. Product Innovation Timeline STORIES
2012

3
4 ~ ➔ IZ➔ t1 MINIMALIST
INTERFACE
5 DISAPPEARING
ME SSAGES
2011 Snapchat's core offering evolved
into the stories we see on every
6 The original innovation
that launched t he
The app opened directly to
the camera, and kept most of
social platform today. Drawing
and text tools helped people
its functionality hidden until
company's success express themselves in new ways

7
users discovered it or were
shown by more savvy peers

8 GEOFILTERS

9
Snapchat took
popular o fferings
(e.g. Bilmoji, Face Swap}
FEATURE
INTEGRATI ON
8 2014

~~ ~
and seamlessly
integrated them into c,r,=-
their own app c;(""E_
10 LEN SES Location•specific
filters opened up new
2015
opportunities for
11 The acquisition of Looksery
allowed Snape hat to create fun
e ngagement

SNAP CODE S anim ated selfie lenses

12 2015
Spectacles were smartglasses

13 ~:t~ r'
'fc3f(c3j'
dedicated to recording video for
u se on the platform. The initial
product launch failed to take off,
STORY SPECTA CLES but newer generations are still
EXPLORER 2016
14
being produced with a focus on
By creating scannable 2015 AR experiences
codes for profiles, users
were able to leverage their This feature took user-generated

15 -~m.,¥.ff.,- followings on other

•iilillllilllili..
.:,rms to grow their
ltwork on Snapchat
content to the next level by
curat ing snaps from specific
locations and events vlsualcapltallst.com ~

16
42. In 2012, Snap launched on Android and added video capabilities, pushing the
17
number of “snaps” to 50 million per day.15
18
43. In 2012, Snapchat also became known as the go-to product for users who wanted
19
their data to disappear, including drug dealers and pedophiles, and was dubbed the “sexting” app.16
20
44. In 2013, Snap added its “Chat” and “Stories” features – “changing the face of social
21
media timelines forever.”17 The story feature enabled Snapchat users to post a series of snaps that
22
would remain active and viewable for 24 hours, which specific product feature has been identified
23
as one popular among drug dealers – they use the story app to publish their drug menus, and
24
because they know the evidence will simply disappear.18
25
26 15
https://www.thestreet.com/technology/history-of-snapchat
16
27 17
https://frozenfire.com/history-of-snapchat/
Id.
28 18
See, e.g., https://evokewellnessma.com/blog/using-snapchat-to-deal-drugs/;
https://www.banyantreatmentcenter.com/2022/07/25/snapchat-drug-dealers-massachusetts/.

COMPLAINT 13
 1 45. The following is just one example of a Snapchat drug menu,

2 .,
........... -----
OCNA.N•

3
4
MENU OPOU
ll81lt0 SKROOKS I - 1\#W

5 Wl, BTHSI~ . \ 46/$200 28G

6 a-11ws4o 112
SSOAGRAM $260 88All
7
M30 PERC 30S I
8 $30 EACH S20 ON SUlK
PAPER AClD TABS I -.
9 S20 EAC.tl
SOUR MOOCKI 66 1
· °'
10
$40 8THS
11 SIO 146 S200 286
EXTACY PILLS . STl1!l K(ISS~
12 1rz (JJTIID6f S S40
S15 EACH
13 XANS S10 EACH
PREROLLED BACCVIOOOS SlO
14
ci T"J. tJ.¥ . ·•
15
16
46. In 2013, Instagram launched Instagram Direct in an effort to compete with
17
Snapchat’s photo messaging platform; and in response to that, Snap launched filters, timestamps,
18
temperature and speed overlays, and Snap replays.19
19
47. In 2014, Snap added text conversations, live video chat capabilities, “Our Story,”
20
Geofilters, and Snapcash. Chat allowed users to talk to one another in the chat window via live
21
video chat,20 which feature also is appealing to drug dealers as it means no evidence – no call logs
22
or text message trails that can be used by parents or the police to trace a drug deal back to them.
23
Snap does not limit use of that product, or any of these products, to adults.
24
48. In 2015, Snap was reaching 75 million users on a monthly basis. Snap introduced
25
Discover (“a fun and interactive source of content from media partners such as National
26
27
28 19
https://frozenfire.com/history-of-snapchat/
20
https://www.thestreet.com/technology/history-of-snapchat

COMPLAINT 14
 1 Geographic, Comedy Central, CNN, and more”),21 QR code incorporation, and facial recognition

2 software, and began its monetization strategy. Snap also launched several “hilarious animated

3 selfie lenses” in 2015.22 Advertisements were now a huge source of Snap’s revenue – according

4 to company financials, they made up 99% of total revenue.23

5 49. In 2016, Snap introduced Memories, Groups, and the My Eyes Only self-

6 destructing data vault product. The same year, Instagram launched its own “Stories” product,

7 directly copying from the Snapchat Stories product Snap introduced back in 2013 and due to how

8 wildly popular Stories proved to be with teens and young adults.24

9 C. Snap’s Soaring Popularity in the Youth Market

10 50. Since its start, Snapchat sought to hook Millennials (people born between 1981 and

11 1996) and Gen Z (people born between 1996 and 2009). Its own website tells potential marketers

12 that “[t]ogether, Millennials and Gen Z have over $1 Trillion in direct spending power. They are

13 a valuable audience that it is hard to reach and whose attention is hard to maintain, but on Snapchat,

14 we’ve got their attention.”25

15 51. Snap’s 2013 launch of its Stories product – the first product of its kind –

16 skyrocketed Snapchat’s popularity with American youth,26 and Snap has worked hard to maintain

17 its title as one of the most popular social media products for tweens and teens ever since.

18 52. By 2015, Snapchat had over 75 million monthly active users and was the most

19
21
20 https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-snap-generation-a-guide-to-snapchats-history/ (the Discover product put
Snap “in a very aggressive place within the overall user interface of the app and delivers an unmatched form of
21 attention from their youthful user base.”).
22
https://www.thestreet.com/technology/history-of-snapchat
23
22 24
Id.
See, e.g., https://frozenfire.com/history-of-snapchat/; https://www.visualcapitalist.com/timeline-looking-back-at-
23 10-years-of-snapchat/
25
https://forbusiness.snapchat.com/blog/snapchatters-and-the-path-to-purchase-shopping-behaviors-on-snapchat
24 26
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/timeline-looking-back-at-10-years-of-snapchat/ (“… the concept of stories is
perhaps the most significant contribution to the digital landscape. Disappearing short-form videos started off as a
25 messaging tool, but ended up transforming the way people share their lives online.”); see also, e.g.,
https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-snap-generation-a-guide-to-snapchats-history/ (“This update marked
26 Snapchat’s first big move into becoming a major platform by creating its own social language and context. It already
had functionality very different from any other social network at the time … But after Stories the platform began to
27 take off and mature as a content destination.”); https://businesschief.com/digital-strategy/curious-history-snapchat-
and-its-increasing-importance-businesses (“parents and other members of older generations have a dominant
28 presence on Facebook, causing younger users to seek out a new platform. Snapchat came on the scene at just the
right time.”).

COMPLAINT 15
 1 popular social media application amongst American teenagers in terms of number of users and

2 time spent using the platform. Snapchat is now one of the most widely used social media products

3 in the world.

4 53. Snapchat is used by an estimated 69% to 82% of all U.S. teens (aged 13 to 17), and

5 36% of U.S. teens report that Snap is their favorite of all the social media apps.27

6 54. Snap has developed images for users to decorate the pictures or videos they post,

7 and Snap has developed Lenses which are augmented reality-based special effects and sounds for

8 users to apply to pictures and videos users post on Snapchat, and World Lenses to augment the

9 environment around posts. Snap also has acquired publication rights to music, audio, and video

10 content that its users can incorporate in the pictures and videos they post on Snapchat. These

11 images, Lenses, and licensed audio and video content supplied and created by Snapchat frequently

12 make a material contribution to the creation or development of the user’s Snapchat posts. Indeed,

13 in many cases, the only content in a user’s Snapchat post are images, Lenses, and licensed audio

14 and video content supplied and created by Snapchat. When users incorporate images, Lenses,

15 music, audio, and video content supplied by Snapchat posts, Snapchat makes a material

16 contribution to the creation and/or development of their Snapchat postings and becomes a co-

17 publisher of such content. When malign users incorporate images, Lenses, music, audio, and video

18 content supplied by Snapchat to their posts, this enhances the psychic harm and defamatory sting

19 that minor users experience from third-party postings on Defendant’s platform.

20 55. Snap also contracts for legal rights in its users’ content, such that it is not “third-

21 party content” at all. Snap’s current Terms of Service grant Snap several, sweeping sets of legal

22 rights, from licensing to ownership.

23 56. Snap directly profits from the videos and pictures and other content its users create

24 in collaboration with Snap, as described above, and its product features have made it the go-to app

25 for minors, drug dealers, and anyone else who needs an effective way to communicate while

26 simultaneously deleting and/or concealing all evidence of such communications. Snap’s

27
28 27
See, e.g. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/snapchat-the-most-popular-social-media-among-us-teens/ (“over 75%
of the 13-34 year old U.S. population uses Snapchat … the most popular social media app among U.S. teens”).

COMPLAINT 16
 1 disappearing data features serve no communication or utility purpose, they simply make its product

2 more popular and exponentially more dangerous for young users.

3 D. Snap Targets Minors While Operating Its Product in a Manner Designed to Evade

4 Parental Consent, and Conceals the Truth to Protect its Own Profits

5 57. Snap markets to children and teens, promoting the lie that its product is safe and

6 fun. Minors are its most valuable demographic – kids who are vulnerable, trusting, easily addicted,

7 and compulsive in their want for social inclusion – make Snap outrageously profitable and

8 competitive in the cutthroat social media market. Opportunistically, Snap has designed its product

9 to ensure that minors can download and use their product without parental consent or oversight.

10 58. Snap’s marketing strategy focuses on juvenile cartoons, reflecting its aim to appeal

11 to children. For instance, one marketing video is titled “Real Friends” and reads, “we talked to

12 thousands of people around the world about their Real friends,” then features Snap users talking

13 about their Snap-developed friendships, followed by avatars (cartoons) of each.

14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22 ------------- --~ ----------------
23
24
25
26
27
28

COMPLAINT 17
 1 59. Another Snapchat commercial focuses on Snap’s photo filters, which is one of

2 Snap’s most popular and appealing products when it comes to children and teens,

3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
60. A third Snapchat commercial opens with two toys (a ghost and a robot) entering a
12
“Snaps” booth. It reads “Happy Snapping! Enjoy the new, faster Snapchat, rebuilt just for
13
Android” then features various goofy photo booth pictures, also appealing to children and teens.
14
15
16 Happy
17
Snapping!
En j oy the new, faster Snapchat.

18 rebuilt just for Andro id .

19
20
21
22
23
24
25 61. Indeed, Snap is considered the gold standard even among its competitors when it
26 comes to effectively marketing and appealing to minors, to the point where Meta Platforms Inc.
27 (formerly, Facebook) (“Meta”) regularly studies Snap’s success. Meta documents refer to
28 Snapchat as “fun, funny, silly and creative – seemingly made just for [tweens].” Meta discusses

COMPLAINT 18
 1 Snapchat features that appeal particularly to children and teens, such as Snap Streaks, Bitmoji, and

2 silly photo filters. It interviewed kids as young as ten about the popularity of Snapchat among that

3 age group and why they love it:

4 a. “I don’t like making accounts on stuff except for Snapchat … I feel

5 safer with just one thing.” – 10-year-old child.

6 b. “Some of the filters are silly so some of the adults are like, ‘What is

7 this? This is like too silly and stuff.’” – 11-year-old child.

8 c. “I found out about Snapchat because most of my friends use it.” – 12-
9 year-old child.28
10 62. Snap has likewise worked hard to maintain the kid-friendly image that makes it so
11 popular among children, and lulls parents into a false sense of security. Snap markets Snapchat as
12 a fun and safe social media product for kids.
13 63. In recent years, Snap has embarked on campaigns to mislead parents about product
14 safety. In April of 2021, Snap published a “Safety” related Blog touting its many efforts to protect
15 its minor users. Snap’s VP of Public Policy, Jen Stout, identified herself as a parent equally
16 concerned with the safety of Snapchat, “I spend a lot of time having these conversations with my
17 own children …” Stout claimed that Snap’s products are “designed differently” than other social
18 media platforms, including in that its “purpose is to design products and build technology that
19 nurtures and supports real friendships in a healthy, safe, and fun environment.”29
20 64. Snap said that it is “an inherently different kind of platform,” and said that “For us,
21 nothing is more important than the safety of our Snapchat community, and we have always
22 believed that we have a responsibility to help our community learn about how to protect their
23 security, privacy, and wellbeing when using our products.”30
24 65. At the same time, Snap ensures that there is no real way for a parent to even learn
25 what Snap does. Snap’s website shows no instructions about or visuals about how the product
26
28
See https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23322940-copy-of-tweens-and-social-media_sanitized_opt, Meta
27 Platforms, Inc. document titled Tweens and Social Media, p. 16, 18, 31.
29
See https://snap.com/en-US/safety-and-impact/page/1, https://snap.com/en-US/safety-and-impact/page/2,
28 https://snap.com/en-US/safety-and-impact/page/3, https://snap.com/en-US/safety-and-impact/page/4.
30
See https://snap.com/en-US/safety-and-impact/page/4.

COMPLAINT 19
 1 works. It provides no warnings to parents about the risks of the product if their children use it.

2 Presumably the only way a parent could learn about Snap is by downloading it themselves, thereby

3 becoming a contractual user of the product and benefiting Snap as a direct result. But even then,

4 Snap does not provide parents with the information or promised reporting mechanisms and

5 conceals all information known to Snap and relating to the harms its product cause.

6 66. Snap made representations about its product design and development process to

7 induce users’ trust and mislead their parents into believing Snapchat is safer than the social media

8 products offered by its competitors. Snap’s representations were false and designed to mislead

9 users and their parents.

10 The Architecture of Snapchat

11
• We use product development processes that consider the
12 privacy, safety, and ethical implications of a new feature at the
13 front end of the design process -- and we don't launch products
14 that don't pass our intensive reviews.
15
16 67. The amount of revenue Snap receives is based upon the amount of time and user

17 engagement on its platform, while Snap’s marketing and representations as to the safety of its

18 product, particularly for minor users, were not the truth.

19 E. Young Users’ Incomplete Brain Development Renders Them Particularly
20 Susceptible to Snap’s Manipulative Social Media Products and Features
21 68. The human brain is still developing during adolescence in ways consistent with the
22 demonstrated psychosocial immaturity of adolescents. Specifically, adolescents’ brains are not yet

23 fully developed in regions related to risk evaluation, emotional regulation, and impulse control.

24 69. The frontal lobes—and in particular the prefrontal cortex—of the brain play an
25 essential part in higher-order cognitive functions, impulse control, and executive decision-making.
26 These regions of the brain are central to the process of planning and decision-making, including
27 the evaluation of future consequences and the weighing of risk and reward. They are also essential
28 to the ability to control emotions and inhibit impulses. MRI studies have shown that the prefrontal

COMPLAINT 20
 1 cortex is one of the last regions of the brain to mature.

2 70. During childhood and adolescence, the brain is maturing in at least two major ways.

3 First, the brain undergoes myelination, the process through which the neural pathways connecting

4 different parts of the brain become insulated with white fatty tissue called myelin. Second, during

5 childhood and adolescence, the brain is undergoing “pruning”—the paring away of unused

6 synapses, leading to more efficient neural connections. Through myelination and pruning, the

7 brain’s frontal lobes change to help the brain work faster and more efficiently, improving the

8 “executive” functions of the frontal lobes, including impulse control and risk evaluation. This shift

9 in the brain’s composition continues throughout adolescence and into young adulthood.

10 71. In late adolescence, important aspects of brain maturation remain incomplete,

11 particularly those involving the brain’s executive functions and the coordinated activity of regions

12 involved in emotion and cognition. As such, the part of the brain that is critical for control of

13 impulses and emotions and for mature, considered decision-making is still developing during

14 adolescence, consistent with the demonstrated behavioral and psychosocial immaturity of

15 juveniles.

16 72. The recommendation technologies, rewards, operative conditioning features, and

17 Snap’s marketing of its social media product all are designed to exploit the diminished decision-

18 making capacity, impulse control, emotional maturity, and psychological resiliency caused by

19 incomplete brain development in Snap’s minor and young adult users. Snap knows that because

20 those users’ frontal lobes are not fully developed, they experience enhanced dopamine responses

21 to stimuli on Snap’s social media platform and are therefore much more likely to become addicted

22 to Snap’s product; exercise poor judgment in their social media activity; and act impulsively in

23 response to social media encounters. Snap also knows that minor and young adult users of its

24 Snapchat product are much more likely to sustain serious physical and psychological harm through

25 such use than adult users. Nevertheless, Snap knowingly designs its Snapchat product to be

26 addictive to minor and young adult users and failed to include in its product design any safeguards

27 to account for and ameliorate the psychosocial immaturity of its minor users; and failed to warn

28 users or their parents of these dangers, which were known only to Snap.

COMPLAINT 21
 1 F. Snap’s False Representations that It Is a Safe Product

2 73. Snap has always represented to the public and governments around the world that

3 its product is safe, not addictive, and low risk through its advertising and marketing,

4 representations to users, and more recently, sworn testimony under oath before Congress.

5 74. In testimony on October 26, 2021, before a Senate Subcommittee, Snap’s VP of

6 Public Policy testified that “Snapchat makes it intentionally difficult for strangers to find people

7 that they don’t know. We do not have open profiles; we do not have browsable pictures. We don’t

8 have the ability to understand who people’s friends are and where they go to school …”31

9 75. These statements ignored the fact that Snap, at all times relevant, was utilizing its

10 direct messaging and video/live chat products as well as its “Quick Add” product which

11 recommended children to adult Snapchat users and strangers. On top of which, Snap designed its

12 product specifically to incentivize children into accepting Snap’s Quick Add requests from

13 strangers – thereby increasing engagement – via gamification and variable reward features.

14 76. Snap also testified in written testimony that “We make no effort—and have no

15 plans—to market to children, and individuals under the age of 13 are not permitted to create

16 Snapchat accounts.”32 As evidenced by Snap’s own marketing materials and product features,

17 Snap absolutely markets and makes its product available to persons under 18, and Snap makes no

18 actual or reasonable efforts to prevent its distribution of its Snapchat product to persons under 13.

19 On the contrary, there are millions of children under 13 currently using the Snapchat product, and

20 Snap is profiting handsomely from their use.

21 77. Snap relies on users to recruit their younger friends and siblings to use Snapchat.

22 Because communication via Snap is a private and closed loop, a person can only receive a Snap if

23 they, too, have the application. Consequently, the funny filters, which appeal and attract

24 exceedingly young children can only be accessed by people who have full Snap capabilities from

25
31
Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security hearing, Oct. 26, 2021,
26 available at https://www.c-span.org/video/?515533-1/snapchat-tiktok-youtube-executives-testify-kids-online-
safety&live (starting at 2:14:00).
27 32
Written Testimony of Jennifer Stout, Vice President of Global Public Policy, Snap Inc., Hearing before the United
States Senate Committee on Science, Commerce, and Transportation, Subcommittee on Consumer Protection,
28 Product Safety, and Data Security, Oct. 26, 2021, available at
https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/0AACA9BA-49C8-4AC3-8C2E-E62ACC3F73BC.

COMPLAINT 22
 1 downloading Snap. This encourages kids to recruit their friends into using the product, and kids to

2 override parental permission because of the quest to be included and belong. Similarly, Snap relies

3 on peer-to-peer recruitment with its Streak trend popular among the youngest of users and within

4 families wherein users who are all on an ongoing Snap group chat must post a picture everyday

5 onto the chat or else they will “lose” their streak. Participation in the streaks, a feature that appeals

6 to the demographic of young tweens who desperately want to belong, is only possible for

7 individuals who have downloaded the Snap app.

8 G. Snap’s Facilitation of Illicit Activity and Evasion of Parental Consent

9 78. Snap represented in its Transparency Report for the second half of 2021:
When we find activity involving the sale of dangerous drugs, we promptly
10 ban the account, block the offender from creating new accounts on
Snapchat, and have the ability to preserve content related to the account to
11 support law enforcement investigations. … Globally, the median
12 turnaround time we took action to enforce against these accounts was within
13 minutes of receiving a report.33
13 Yet (and as discussed in more detail throughout and in other complaints filed against Snap, see,
14 e.g., Neville et al. v. Snap, Inc., L.A. County (Case No. 22STCV33500), Eubanks v. Snap, Inc.,
15
L.A. County (Case No. 22STCV36189), Plunk et al v. Snap, Inc., L.A. County (Case No.
16
22STCV36229), and Stabile et al v. Snap, Inc., L.A. County (Case No. 23SMCV00061), Snap
17
often waits several months to act on known and reported drug dealers using the Snapchat product
18
to harm kids. This is just another example of Snap prioritizing its revenue over user safety and
19
then deceiving consumers to lull users and their parents into a false sense of safety.
20
79. Snap likewise purports to prohibit use of its social media product for illegal
21
purposes and reserves the right to terminate offending accounts and users. Snap’s Community
22
Guidelines identify a litany of harmful and/or illegal activities – including the sale of drugs – which
23
Snap claims to actively prohibit on its social media product.
24
80. Snap also claims that it does not allow convicted sex offenders to create Snapchat
25
accounts, does not allow multiple personal accounts, and does not allow users to open a new
26
account after having an account disabled by Snap.
27
28
33
See Transparency Report for the Second Half of 2021, Apr. 1, 2022, https://snap.com/en-US/safety-and-impact.

COMPLAINT 23
 1 81. Yet, Snap does not undertake reasonable efforts to prevent known offenders from

2 creating multiple accounts and often refuses to terminate the most dangerous of its violators –

3 including Snap dealers who are known to be selling to young children. All of these defects and

4 shortcomings mean more revenue for Snap.

5 82. Snap likewise scoffs at parental consent and has designed its product in a manner

6 that encourages and assists children in bypassing parental consent and control.

7 83. Snap claims that it does not distribute its product to anyone under the age of 13,

8 and that users under 18 require parental consent.34 Yet Snap does not take any reasonable steps to

9 verify age, identity, or parental consent, and regularly provides its services to users it knows or

10 should know to be under 13 and/or aged 13 to 17 but without parental consent.

11 84. In fact, despite knowing that it is legally prohibited from providing its product to

12 kids under 13, Snap’s Apple App Store page – where the majority of users download the product

13 – represents that the Snapchat product is safe for users “12+.” 35

14
App Store Preview
15
16 Information

17 Seller Size
258.3 MB
Categor~
Snap, Inc. Photo & Video . -------

18 Compat1b11tty Languages Aqe Ratinq ~

iPhone English, Arabic, Bengali, Danish, Dutch, FIiipino, 12+
Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, H more
19
Requ1res iOS 12.0 or later. Infrequent/MIid Alcohol , Tobacco, or Drug Use or
References
iPod touch Infrequent/ Mild Sexual Content and Nudity

20
Requires iOS 12.0 or later. Infrequent/ Mild Mature/Suggestive Th emes
Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor

21 Location
This app may use your location even when it isn't
Copyright
® Snap Inc.
Pric~
Free
open , which can decrease battery life .
22 In-App Pu!':hases
1. Snapchal+ (Monthly Plan) $3,99
23 2. Snapchat+ (12- Month Plan}
3. Geofilter
$39,99
$5,99
morn
24
85. Snap does not actually care about a user’s age as long as a user is young,
25
impressionable, and able to spend as much time as possible using its product.
26
86. Snap does not provide parents with an accessible and/or staffed reporting
27
28 34
Snapchat Terms of Service, effective November 15, 2021.
35
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/snapchat/id447188370

COMPLAINT 24
 1 mechanism for the reporting of unauthorized use by their minor children.

2 87. Snap also does not stop distributing its Snapchat social media product even when

3 it has actual notice of no parental consent, and unless it determines that stopping will make more

4 economic sense for Snap. At least one recent Magistrate Judge Report (in a lawsuit pending in the

5 District of Oregon) noted that Snap does not even stop distributing its Snapchat social media

6 products – as required if nothing else by Snap’s own terms of service – after receipt of actual notice

7 of non-consent and the filing of a Complaint. This is true in several recently filed cases, which

8 involve minors where their parents could not have made the lack of consent clearer – specifically,

9 even when faced with legal complaint and actual notice of non-consent, Snap has routinely made

10 the decision to not suspend the prohibited Snapchat accounts or even preserve ongoing content

11 exchanged and/or viewed through the prohibited Snapchat accounts.

12 88. Instead, Snap lets its unauthorized young users disable and then recreate accounts;

13 users who never had parental authorization to create the account or, in some cases, expressly had

14 parents deny Snap consent for their kids to use the product.

15 89. In summary, Snap designs its products in a manner that encourages and aids its

16 youngest users in the evasion of and interference with parental and/or law enforcement oversight,

17 including but not limited to features and practices such as (a) disappearing evidence, (b) the hard

18 to find My Eyes Only data vault and incinerator, (c) failure to provide customers with information

19 on how to monitor and/or limit their children’s use, (d) failure to close accounts and block access

20 to minors when lack of parental consent or underage status is or should be known to Snap, (e)

21 failure to notify parents or provide any product features or tools for tracking the amount of time

22 minor users spend on the Snapchat product, what hours of the day they are using the Snapchat

23 product, and when they are contacted and/or solicited by adult users, (f) failure to verify user

24 emails or phone numbers, (g) allowance of multiple accounts, despite claiming to prohibit multiple

25 accounts, and (h) otherwise refusing to enforce its own age limitations in any reasonable or

26 meaningful manner.

27 90. Snap is providing access to millions of minors under 13 and under 18 but lacking

28 parental consent, knows or should know that these minors are not duly authorized to use its

COMPLAINT 25
 1 Snapchat product, and provides them with access regardless and because it views its young users

2 as its most valuable asset. Snap has turned a blind eye to such use – including the use by Plaintiffs’

3 children as detailed in this Complaint – in the name of corporate profit.

4 91. Moreover, these types of Snap product features and policies are precisely what

5 make the Snapchat social media so appealing to drug dealers– Snap promises anonymity and lack

6 of content oversight, along with millions of unsupervised minors and proprietary (even patented)

7 technologies designed to erase or encrypt all evidence of wrongdoing.

8 H. Snapchat is Designed to Be Addictive to Minor Users

9 92. Addiction is not restricted to substance abuse disorders. Rather, the working

10 definition of addiction promulgated in the seminal article Addictive Behaviors: Etiology and

11 Treatment published by the American Psychological Association in its 1988 Annual Review of

12 Psychology defines addiction as,

13 a repetitive habit pattern that increases the risk of disease and/or associate personal
and social problems. Addictive behaviors are often experienced subjectively as
14 ‘loss of control’ – the behavior contrives to occur despite volitional attempts to
abstain or moderate use. These habit patterns are typically characterized by
15 immediate gratification (short term reward), often coupled with delayed deleterious
effects (long term costs). Attempts to change an addictive behavior (via treatment
16 or self-initiation) are typically marked with high relapse rate.
17 93. Addiction researchers agree that addiction involves six core components:
18 (1) salience—the activity dominates thinking and behavior; (2) mood modification—the activity
19 modifies/improves mood; (3) tolerance—increasing amounts of the activity are required to achieve
20 previous effects; (4) withdrawal—the occurrence of unpleasant feelings when the activity is
21 discontinued or suddenly reduced; (5) conflict—the activity causes conflicts in relationships, in
22 work/education, and other activities; and (6) relapse—a tendency to revert to earlier patterns of the
23 activity after abstinence or control.
24 94. Social media addiction has emerged as a problem of global concern, with
25 researchers all over the world conducting studies to evaluate how pervasive the problem
26 is. Addictive social media use is manifested when a user (1) becomes preoccupied by social media
27 (salience); (2) uses social media in order to reduce negative feelings (mood modification); (3)
28 gradually uses social media more and more in to get the same pleasure from it (tolerance/craving);

COMPLAINT 26
 1 (4) suffers distress if prohibited from using social media (withdrawal); (5) sacrifices other

2 obligations and/ or causes harm to other important life areas because of their social media use

3 (conflict/functional impairment); and (6) seeks to curtail their use of social media without success

4 (relapse/loss of control).

5 95. The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS) was specifically developed by

6 psychologists in order to assess subjects’ social media use using the aforementioned addiction

7 criteria and is by far the most widely used measure of social media addiction. Originally designed

8 for Facebook, BFAS has since been generalized to all social media. BFAS has been translated into

9 dozens of languages, including Chinese, and is used by researchers throughout the world to

10 measure social media addiction.

11 96. BFAS asks subjects to consider their social media usage with respect to the six

12 following statements and answer either (1) very rarely, (2) rarely, (3) sometimes, (4) often, or (5)

13 very often,

14 a. You spend a lot of time thinking about social media or planning how to

15 use it.

16 b. You feel an urge to use social media more and more.

17 c. You use social media in order to forget about personal problems.

18 d. You have tried to cut down on the use of social media without success.

19 e. You become restless or troubled if you are prohibited from using social

20 media.

21 f. You use social media so much that it has had a negative impact on your

22 job/studies.

23 Subjects who score a “4” or “5” on at least 4 of those statements are deemed to suffer from social

24 media addiction.

25 97. Addictive use of social media by minors is psychologically and neurologically

26 analogous to gaming addiction, a recognized mental health disorder by the World Health

27 Organization and International Classification of Diseases and is functionally and psychologically

28 equivalent to social media addition. The diagnostic symptoms of social media addiction among

COMPLAINT 27
 1 minors are the same as the symptoms of addictive gaming promulgated in DSM 5 and include,

2 a. Preoccupation with social media and withdrawal symptoms (sadness,

3 anxiety, irritability) when device is taken away or not possible (sadness,

4 anxiety, irritability).

5 b. Tolerance, the need to spend more time using social media to satisfy the

6 urge.
7 c. Inability to reduce social media usages, unsuccessful attempts to quit
8 gaming.
9 d. Giving up other activities, loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities
10 due to social media usage.
11 e. Continuing to use social media despite problems.
12 f. Deceiving family members or others about the amount of time spent on
13
social media.
14
g. The use of social media to relieve negative moods, such as guilt or
15
hopelessness.
16
h. and Jeopardized school or work performance or relationships due to social
17
media usage.
18
98. Snap monetizes itself through the selling of advertisements and acquires other value
19
from mining its users’ behavioral and consumer habits. Unbeknownst to Snap’s young users is the
20
fact that Snap makes a profit by finding unique and increasingly dangerous ways to capture user
21
attention and targeting advertisements to its users.
22
99. The longer a user is on the application and more frequent the use, the more Snap
23
profits. Likewise, the more individuals who use Snap, the more Snap profits.
24
100. Snap seeks user growth and increased usage at all costs.
25
101. Snap receives revenue from advertisers who pay a premium to target
26
advertisements to specific demographic groups of users.
27
102. Snap’s business model means that the longer it keeps users on its product (and away
28

COMPLAINT 28
 1 from competitor products) the more money it makes; and it relies on recruitment of new users and

2 continued engagement of existing users for its survival and success.

3 103. From the beginning, Snap (and a handful of its closest competitors) chose to design

4 their products in a manner intended to exploit vulnerabilities in human psychology to addict users

5 and maximize user time and engagement.

6 104. Snap continues to design and operate product features of particular addictiveness

7 to children. Snap knows that its designs have created extreme and addictive usage by minor users,

8 and Snap knowingly and purposefully designed its products to encourage such addictive behaviors.

9 Indeed, on information and belief, Snap has employed countless psychologists and engineers and

10 has invested millions to help make its product maximally addicting to minors.

11 105. For example, Snap utilizes unknown and changing rewards, which are designed to

12 prompt users who use its products in excessive and dangerous ways. The achievements and

13 trophies products in Snapchat – Trophies, Charms, and Scores – operate based on criteria unknown

14 to users. Snap has stated that “[y]ou don’t even know about the achievement until you unlock it.”

15 This design conforms to well-established principles of operant conditioning wherein intermittent

16 reinforcement provides the most reliable tool to maintain a desired behavior over time. The design

17 is akin to a slot machine but marketed toward minor users who are even more susceptible than

18 gambling addicts to the variable reward and reminder system designed by Snapchat. The system

19 is designed to reward increasingly extreme behavior because users are not actually aware of what

20 action will unlock the next award.

21 106. Snap engineers its Snapchat product to keep users, and particularly young users,

22 engaged longer and coming back for more through what is referred to as “engineered addiction.”

23 Examples include features like bottomless scrolling, tagging, notifications, and hidden and

24 changing rewards systems like the ones discussed above.

25 107. The Snap Streak feature is another product that is unique to Snapchat and is one of

26 the most – if not the most – addictive products available “especially to teenagers.”36 Snap knows

27 that its Snap Streak product is addictive and has known for years but continues to provide that

28
36
See https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/experts-warn-parents-snapchat-hook-teens-streaks/story?id=48778296

COMPLAINT 29
 1 product to teens and children. In many cases, minor children are so locked-in to the Streaks product

2 that they cannot stop using Snapchat no matter how much harm the product is causing them, and

3 for fear of losing the Streaks.

4 108. Snap also sends push notifications and emails to encourage addictive behavior and

5 to increase use of its Snapchat product. Snap’s communications are triggered and based on

6 information Snap collects from and about their users, and also, from other users who know and/or

7 interact with its users. Snap then “pushes” these communications to teen users in excessive

8 numbers and disruptive times of day, pushing them into getting back onto the app and causing

9 known harms for Snap’s own economic benefit.

10 109. Snap’s push notifications are specifically designed to, and do, prompt minor users

11 to open its social media products and view the content Snap selected, increasing sessions, and

12 resulting in greater profits for Snap. On information and belief, Snap purposefully drafts and sends

13 language in these notifications designed to elicit such continued use – for example, being vague

14 and/or triggering an emotional reaction, rather than simply copying the entire text of a message or

15 event into the notification itself.

16 110. Snap does not warn minor users or their parents of the addictive design of its

17 product. On the contrary, it actively conceals the dangerous and addictive nature of its product,

18 lulling users and their parents into a false sense of security. This includes consistently playing

19 down its product’s negative effects on teens and dangers in public statements and advertising,

20 making false or materially misleading statements concerning product safety, and refusing to make

21 its research public or available to academics or lawmakers who ask for it.

22 I. Snap’s Disappearing Message Feature is Defective and Dangerous to Minors.

23 111. Snapchat’s disappearing messages feature is what initially distinguished Snap’s

24 product from competing social media products, like Instagram and TikTok. When a Snapchat user

25 snaps an image of themselves using the in-product camera feature, they get to select on a dial how

26 many seconds their Snap will be viewable to the recipient before it vanishes forever. Unlike a few

27 other social media products that have more recently implemented similar features, this is not an

28 optional setting for Snap - it is Snap’s primary function and feature. Snaps disappear within a

COMPLAINT 30
 1 matter of seconds after being opened by the recipient and, once the Snap has disappeared, it is no

2 longer accessible, even in some circumstances to Snap itself.

3 112. Snap then added an extra layer to ensure disappearance. If the recipient of a Snap

4 screenshots it, Snap sends the sender a push alert informing them that the image they sent was

5 captured. This alert typically prompts the sender to pressure the recipient to delete the

6 screenshotted image or, at the very least, dissuades users who have an interest in not getting caught

7 from communicating with that user again.

8 113. Although Snapchat opens right to the camera, Snaps can be image-based or text-

9 based. Just like the images, Snap’s disappearing message design is incorporated into Snapchat’s

10 direct messaging so that users are only able to view messages in a particular chat thread, and once

11 they close the thread the messages disappear, leaving no trace behind.

12 114. The disappearing product feature appeals to minors who typically begin using Snap

13 at a point in their life when they are vying for privacy and testing the boundaries of their

14 independence from their parents. While the disappearing product feature also appeals to predatory

15 adult users, an inherently dangerous combination.

16 115. Snap also claims that parents should be responsible for their kids’ use of the

17 Snapchat product, yet Snap distributes its product without parental consent and Snap’s

18 disappearing message feature makes it impossible for parents to monitor their children’s social

19 media activity. Snap does this by design. If Snap wanted to actually provide parents with the ability

20 to control, even block their child’s use of the Snapchat product, there are multiple quick and

21 efficient changes Snap could make to its product design and distribution decisions that would help

22 accomplish this. To name only a few examples, requiring verification of age, identity, and parental

23 consent, widely available facial recognition software (of which Snap has actual knowledge)

24 capable of quickly ascertaining a user’s age without collecting identification information, and/or

25 providing parents with a Device ID opt out list – that is, Snap is able to block access to its product

26 on a per-device basis, and could easily give parents the option of blocking a device. These are just

27 a few examples of available technologies and methods Snap could, but doesn’t, utilize to enforce

28 its own terms and make its product exponentially safer for children, teens, and young adults.

COMPLAINT 31
 1 116. Snap sabotages parents in the decision to even let their kid download Snapchat in

2 the first place. Snap’s website and product pages on the App store provide no instructions or visuals

3 about how the product works. Snap does not warn parents of the risks of the product; on the

4 contrary, its commercials, product pages, website, and all other materials put out by Snap are

5 designed to convince parents that Snapchat is made for kids and is fun and safe for them to use.

6 117. In or around June of 2022, Snap doubled down on its disregard for parental rights

7 and began distributing its product to children via web browsers, meaning that kids no longer even

8 need to download the app – they just need access to the internet, which change will make it even

9 more difficult for parents to exercise control through individual devices.

10 118. Snap does everything possible to lull parents into a false sense of security and then

11 ensures that parents have no way to stop their children from using its defective and inherently

12 dangerous social media product. If parents want to learn about the product, there is no way for

13 them to even start to do so without first having to download the Snapchat product themselves,

14 which then forces them into a contractual relationship with Snap and subjects them to Snap’s

15 invasive data mining activities – from which Snap, of course, also makes a profit. Even then,

16 however, Snap’s materials say nothing about the dangers of its addictive design, failure to protect

17 minor users and utilization of products that actively introduce children to strangers for Snap’s

18 economic benefit, failure to act on known harms and predators using the Snapchat product, misuse

19 and/or problematic use of the Snapchat product by children, or any of the other myriad dangers

20 known to Snap but not users or their parents from use of the Snapchat product.

21 119. Snap also encourages the commission of harmful and illegal acts. Not surprisingly,

22 the disappearing content and posting feature and hidden, impenetrable data vault features attract

23 adult users interested in using the app for sexual predations37 and drug sales.

24 120. Snap itself grooms its young users for those predators. By positioning itself as one

25 of the first apps a user downloads once they have their first phone, its youngest users are primed

26 to consider Snapchat a safe place, especially if their introduction to the product is within the safety

27 of a closed circuit of friends and siblings with whom they share silly pictures. Familiarity also

28
37
See, e.g., https://phonespector.com/blog/what-are-the-dangers-of-snapchat-to-avoid/

COMPLAINT 32
 1 breeds trust and as discussed in earlier sections, Snap prides itself on users accessing the Snapchat

2 product an average of thirty times a day, which is a low estimate. Collectively, the product is

3 designed and operated to establish a false sense of safety, which Snap does deliberately and for its

4 own economic gain but which, in turn, makes its youngest users vulnerable and unguarded to the

5 dangers the app creates (also for Snap’s own economic gain).

6 J. The Snap Drug Cartel

7 121. “Snapchat is one of the most popular apps for buying and selling drugs, because

8 the messages automatically disappear.”38 This is not speculation. This is what investigative

9 reporters and educators have found and Snapchat Dealers and minor users confirm. The following

10 are only a few examples.

11 122. “Specifically, the reason why Snapchat is utilized in this way is because – the way

12 that the app itself is set up is pretty much once it is opened and looked at, it disappears,” says

13 Ashley Richardson, who visits classrooms and talks to kids and teens through her work with the

14 Prevention Council of Roanoke County.39

15 123. They say they see the ads almost daily. “Like yesterday, this person added me and

16 they were selling Xanax,” said the eighth-grader. Drug dealers are called ‘plugs’ on social media,

17 sometimes using a plug emoji to describe them. Some plugs ‘quick add’ people on Snapchat,

18 which categorizes users by zip code. “It really can be scary, because anytime, like, you could

19 buy it,” said the eighth-grader. “They’ll sell it to anyone.” This method is often used to get in front

20 of a ton of potential customers. Drug dealers find potential young customers on Snapchat, social

21 media, published November 19, 2019 (emphasis added).40

22 124. Article published in June 2019 titled A College Dealer Explains Why Snapchat is

23 So Great for Selling Weed,

24 38
https://www.wdbj7.com/2021/02/24/early-years-snapchat-and-other-social-media-being-used-by-drug-dealers-to-
25 target-kids/ (February 2021, discussing a Snapchat Dealer and death of a 16-year-old not at issue in this case);
39
Id.; see also, e.g., https://fox4kc.com/news/teens-deadly-overdose-prompts-warning-about-snapchats-role-in-
26 buying-selling-drugs/ (“‘I thought the worst thing that can happen on Snapchat were nude pictures or saying
something inappropriate or something like that,’ Berman said. ‘I had no idea there were drug dealers on there.’”);
27 https://420intel.com/articles/2021/12/23/killed-pill-bought-snapchat-counterfeit-drugs-poisoning-us-teens (article
identifying several other Snapchat related Fentanyl overdose deaths among minors, many not at issue in this case).
28 40
https://kutv.com/news/addicted-utah/addicted-utah-drug-dealers-find-potential-young-customers-on-snapchat-
social-media

COMPLAINT 33
 1 You advertise on Snapchat. How has the platform changed your business?
2 For frequent customers I send them a Snapchat of what's new in stock and give
3 them first choice on what they want. Sometimes people who want to score will
contact me on Snapchat because they think it's more low key. Snapchat makes it
4
way easier for me to show people exactly what I've got. If I have different strains of
5 bud, I can immediately send people a picture or video on Snapchat of exactly what I
6 have.

7
8 125. “Snapchat is a social media app that allows people to post photos and videos, which

9 then disappear once they have been read … Dealers post videos that promote the drugs they have

10 for sale, as well as sending daily offers and advertisements via private messaging.”41

11 126. An NBC News investigation in October 2021 identified teen and young adult deaths

12 in more than a dozen U.S. states traced back to the Snapchat product and the types of drug deals

13 described in this Complaint.42 On information and belief, that data is now outdated, and Snapchat

14 deaths from fentanyl poisoning can be traced back to far more U.S. states than those identified.

15 127. In August of 2021, the Maricopa County Attorneys’ Office issued a News Flash

16 (“The Connection Between Snapchat and Fentanyl”) warning residents that, “… Snapchat is the

17 platform that gets used the most as it provides anonymity, disappearing content, and doesn’t allow

18 third-party monitoring.”43

19 Unfortunately, teens have become the target of these pills. Drug trafficking organizations create these pills in the shapes, colors, and sizes or
those that appeal to teens and use social media to distribute them. As a result, teens may think they're getting a legitimate prescription
medication such as Oxycodone, Adderall, or Xanax pills but instead are buying counterfeit pills laced with fenlanyl and methamphetamlne.
20
Like many thi ngs today, drug deals are no longer done on the streets and have switched to an online platform. While teens may use all forms of
21 social media to purchase these pills, Snapchat is the platform that gets used the most as ii provides anonymity, disappearing content, and
doesn't allow third-party monitoring . For example, drug dealers can post anonymous stories with the1r ''menu" and receive ·orders· directly on the

22
app, all of which will disappear, making It hard lo track. In January of this year, Snapchat had 108 million users in the U.S, with 15 to 25-year-
olds making up 48o/o of all users.

23
24
25 41
See, e.g., https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tees-51109346, article titled Snapchat drug dealers target
26 Middlesbrough Children, discussing death of another 13-year-old due to Snapchat and Fentanyl laced pills; see also
https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdva/pr/snapchat-sale-fentanyl-laced-pills-leads-teenage-overdose-death-and-guilty-
27 plea (DOJ press release, dated June 6, 2022, reporting 16-year-old fentanyl poisoning death due to Snapchat).
42
https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cannabis/22/01/25199119/fentanyl-deaths-snapchat-to-crack-down-on-traffi;
28 https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/pills-bought-on-snapchat-deadly/.
43
https://www.maricopacountyattorney.org/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=844

COMPLAINT 34
 1 128. Snap has actual knowledge of these harms, and their nexus to its product and the

2 decisions Snap itself is making. For years, Snap has received reports of child exploitation and

3 abuse, bullying, drug deals, and human trafficking occurring through its product and because of

4 its product features,44 yet has kept those features in place as removing them would negatively

5 impact the popularity of Snap’s social media product and, in turn, Snap’s revenue.

6 129. As relevant to this Complaint, Snap has received reports of drug dealers using its

7 social media product to sell fatal doses of fentanyl, disguised as prescription drugs, to minor users.

8 Snap has had actual knowledge of these harms for years and is still trying to find the most profitable

9 way to respond to the homicides Snap itself has encouraged, enabled, and facilitated. For example,

10 several articles mention Snap’s promises to take action to detect and identify Snapchat Dealers,

11 while Snap simultaneously takes the position in legal proceedings that Section 230 immunizes it

12 from liability and sanctions its decision to do nothing involving detection and identification. Snap

13 is ignoring what it knows to be the real issue, which is that its product is inherently defective and

14 dangerous to its minor and young users and American children are dying as a result.

15 130. In numerous instances, authorities and other Snapchat users and concerned parents

16 have reported Snapchat Dealers to Snap – despite Snap providing no reasonable or accessible

17 method for reporting of a Snapchat Dealer, as it should have done the moment the first child died

18 from its product if not sooner. Regardless, even then Snap fails to make its product safer for minor

19 users and, in many cases, keeps up the accounts of reported Snapchat Dealers for months or years

20 – continuing to profit from their use of the Snapchat product while more children died.

21 131. Likewise, even when forced to remove a Snap Dealer account, Snap fails to use

22 Device ID and other information Snap collects from users to actually keep those known dealers

23 off the Snapchat product. For example, even where Snap eventually agrees to remove a specific

24 Snap Dealer account it has then purposefully ignored information in its actual possession that it

25 could use to unilaterally block the known dealer from opening, say, half a dozen new accounts for

26 the purpose of selling lethal drugs to underage Snap users. On information and belief, Snap does

27
44
See, e.g., https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/05/26/snapchats-self-destructing-messages-have-
28 created-a-haven-for-child-abuse/?sh=411b8e1d399a (Snapchat Has Become A ‘Haven for Child Abuse’ With Its
‘Self-Destructing Messages’).

COMPLAINT 35
 1 not, however, take such unilateral steps to protect its users because (a) it believes that it does not

2 have the same legal obligations to protect its consumers from known harms as every other

3 company in the world, even where those consumers are children, and (b) it has chosen to prioritize

4 revenue over consumer safety.

5 132. Drug dealers likewise use Snapchat to identify, connect with, and sell their most

6 dangerous drugs to minors at exponentially higher rates than other social media products because

7 of Snap’s promises and repeated assurances that all evidence of their actions will disappear (and/or

8 that they will be notified if anyone tries to retain such evidence).

9 133. Drug dealers can find their consumers through Snap’s geolocating function. Snap’s

10 “snap map” feature, allows users to share their geographic location with contacts, reflected by the

11 users’ choice of adorable Bitmoji showing up on a map. This product feature allows users, drug

12 dealers, to verify and find a contacting user’s location, making drop offs and pickups simple,

13 convenient, and most importantly, untraceable. That is, the Snap map design disposes with the

14 evidence trail of texts or phone calls typical in drug transactions which would inform law

15 enforcement or concerned parents about time, location, cost, and quantity of the transaction.

16 134. Worded otherwise, the Snap Map shows all public Snaps by location. If a Snapchat

17 dealer will be in a particular area, the dealer will look for public Snaps that correspond with their

18 target customers (i.e. children, teenagers, and young adults). The Snapchat dealer then either

19 messages or adds potential users who posted public Snaps. If a child or young adult accepts the

20 Snapchat dealer’s invitation (which they are incentivized to do by Snap itself), the Snapchat dealer

21 then sends direct messages to the user or posts public Snaps that will show up in the user’s feed

22 (including because Snap’s AI technologies then promote such posts to increase Snap’s

23 engagement). This is one of multiple ways Snapchat makes its youngest users identifiable and

24 accessible to Snapchat Dealers.

25 135. Likewise, Snap’s unique filters, lenses, and disappearing messages all work to

26 obscure the activities of Snapchat dealers to law enforcement. For example, a dealer may use a

27 particular Lens to attract kids and indicate what type of drug they are selling. The “language” of

28 what a Lens or emoji means can change rapidly, making it difficult for law enforcement to

COMPLAINT 36
 1 understand exactly what a dealer’s post indicates. Dealers use Snap’s filters to conceal their

2 identity or make themselves more relatable to young users. Snap’s filters and Lenses also make

3 the drug dealer’s posts more visually interesting and stand out in a potential customer’s feed.

4 Snap’s filters and Lenses also are all oriented toward children and young adults (cartoon images,

5 emojis, etc.), while the ephemeral nature of Stories and Snaps makes it even more difficult for law

6 enforcement to locate the dealer, unlike other apps – which is why most of these dealers choose to

7 sell exclusively through the Snapchat product. Snap’s marketing and design, more often than not,

8 protect them from accountability, while Snap’s policies and practices are such that even after

9 Snapchat users are harmed and Snap knows of the harm, Snap allows them to continue in business.

10 136. The following are just some examples of Snapchat features discussed above,

11
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14
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20
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COMPLAINT 37
 1
2 137. Snap’s product features not only help drug dealers find minor Snapchat users, but

3 it also incentives children to accept those incredibly dangerous connections as part of its product

4 design. Snapchat’s Quick Add logic is based on mutual friends and location (via zip code).

5 Snapchat Dealers use the Snap Map product to add “friends” based on public profiles found via

6 the Snap Map geolocation feature. So, for example, if a Snapchat Dealer is in Seattle, Washington

7 for the weekend, they can add “friends” based on public stories in the Seattle area found via the

8 Snap Map. They also know that kids will accept their add because, among other things, Snapchat

9 incentivizes them to do so via its Snap Score product.45 And even if only one of these minor

10 Snapchat users adds the Snapchat Dealer as their “friend,” the dealer can then view their new

11 “friend’s” friends and mass add their friend list or use Quick Add to add that “friend’s” friends

12 (which are weighted by location in Quick Add, making it easier to identify and connect with people

13 in the area that the Snapchat Dealer is targeting). Then the Snapchat Dealer can post public Stories

14 (which is the most popular method for the posting of drug menus) to all “friends” in a particular

15 location. Similarly, Snapchat Dealers can easily locate minors who have posted a public Story in

16 their general location, again utilizing Snap’s Snap Map product. This is another means by which

17 Snap serves them up with minor user access … that is, the Snapchat Dealer need only Quick Add

18 other users from public stories they find in the Snap Map.

19 138. Snap not only has designed and marketed its product in a manner that makes it

20 appear to dealers that they can use Snapchat to sell dangerous (even deadly) drugs to minors and

21 young adults with impunity; it is providing those same dealers with the most effective tools on the

22 market for finding and connecting with kids located in any zip code to which they travel or live.

23 139. This is an effective tool for dealers to reach large number of young, vulnerable

24 customers quickly and, coupled with Snap’s addict-by-design of its youngest users and distribution

25 of its products to children lacking parental knowledge or consent, it becomes a particularly

26 dangerous, effective, and risk-free way for dealers to market and sell their goods.

27 140. Snap’s targeting of children is particularly pernicious in this regard because minors

28
45
Google, for example, has reported millions of searches for “How to improve Snap Score.”

COMPLAINT 38
 1 are such risk-free customer for dealers. First, there’s no risk of a minor being an undercover agent.

2 Second, they have disposable money. Third, they are in an experimental phase of their life. Fourth,

3 youth can be trusted to take particular privacy precautions to avoid getting in trouble themselves.

4 Fifth, they are less likely than adults to have longitudinal relationships with a dealer and are more

5 willing to transact with a stranger. Sixth, they engage in higher risk behavior. Seventh, they

6 underestimate the likelihood of risk; so even if they are aware of the threat of laced pills, they are

7 unlikely to appreciate the fact that it could happen to them (especially when it is someone they

8 have met through the most familiar and mainstream app they have). Eighth, a minor’s guard is

9 already reduced because of the high incidence of addiction to the Snapchat product, which causes

10 sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression, and other symptoms that lead to self-medicating.

11 141. Perhaps most conducive to drug dealing and clandestine purchasing is the My Eyes

12 Only feature Snap released in 2018 – a data vault and incinerator feature that was quietly launched

13 with little fanfare and certainly without informing or warning parents of its incredible dangers.

14 142. Snap’s My Eyes Only product functions as a secret safe within the Snapchat

15 product. It offers a second layer of password protection. Located in a non-obvious location within

16 the Snapchat app, this vault lets users to “easily hide sensitive images and videos” within the app

17 itself.46 My Eyes Only is protected by a pin code, known only to the user. Snap itself does not have

18 the pin code or access to the hidden data; the data contained in My Eyes Only is permanently

19 inaccessible without the pin code and cannot under any circumstances be retrieved if a user loses

20 their pin tries their wrong pin too many times or, as is the case with plaintiffs’ children, dies. 47 In

21 short, minors and other Snapchat users have unfettered access to this hidden vault, while parents,

22 law enforcement, and even Snap do not. This feature appeals to kids and criminals alike.

23 143. My Eyes Only is an inherently dangerous feature and serves no purpose other than

24 evasion, data concealment, and spoliation. The only reason children “need” such a feature is as a

25
26 46
See, e.g., https://beebom.com/how-get-my-eyes-only-snapchat/; https://www.novabach.com/heres-what-
snapchats-my-eyes-only-does/ (“swipe up from the camera screen top open Memories, then swipe left to the “My
27 Eyes Only” tab …”).
47
See, e.g., https://www.devicemag.com/my-eyes-only-snapchat/ (“No, Snapchat cannot look at your My Eyes
28 Only. This is a secure and encrypted feature that protects your Snaps from unauthorized access. Only you can view
the things you’ve saved to My Eyes Only, and even we can’t see them without your password.”).

COMPLAINT 39
 1 subterfuge against guardians who possess parental and property rights in, not to mention legal

2 liability for, their child’s electronic devices. Likewise, the only reason adults “need” such a feature

3 is when they are storing content so volatile and/or illegal that they are unwilling to rely on standard

4 layers of data privacy and security – device pin and Snapchat password to keep it private, and Snap

5 promises to make the data permanently inaccessible to everyone if the pin is lost or not provided.

6 K. Snap’s Product Design Attracts, Encourages, and Facilitates Drug Deals

7 144. Snap is far beneath the standard of care when it comes to the safety of its youngest

8 users. None of its two competitors center their product around private interactions. To the contrary,

9 Snap is constantly innovating to find new ways to isolate its young users into having increasingly

10 private and undetectable interactions, often with strangers. It’s well known that individuals are far

11 more likely to engage in riskier behavior when it’s not public to their peers or loved ones. Snap

12 provides adults with private access to children and destroys the evidence from those activities.

13 145. Snap’s direct messaging and recommendation technologies are inherently

14 dangerous and defective when utilized in connection with minor users as well.

15 146. Snap’s direct messaging feature provide users—including anonymous and semi-

16 anonymous adult users and drug dealers, and any other stranger for whom a parent would not allow

17 access—with unrestricted and unsupervised access to minor users. Minor users lack the cognitive

18 ability and life experience to identify dangerous behaviors and situations, and the psychosocial

19 maturity to protect themselves from the same or inform somebody when they are the victim of a

20 crime. Snap’s product allows direct messaging with and by minors, and without parental

21 notification or consent.

22 147. The text-based direct messaging feature serves no utility other than as an excuse

23 for Snap to send users push notifications to keep them checking their phones and returning to the

24 app. However, it does serve as a useful alternative to kids and adults interested in engaging in illicit

25 undetectable behavior.

26 148. Snap could restrict direct messaging products so that minor users could only send

27 or receive direct messages with persons approved by their parents and/or already on a list of known

28 contacts or the equivalent, or not at all. However, there’s no interface or portal on Snap for parents

COMPLAINT 40
 1 to have that kind of input. A parent would literally have to look over their child’s screen all day

2 (and night, given the normal patterns of usage), more than 30 times a day according to Snap’s own

3 statistics about young users’ usage. This level of supervision is unrealistic (impossible, in fact) and

4 leaves kids who reside in single parent households or whose parents work multiple jobs to fend for

5 themselves.

6 149. Snap’s recommendation feature facilitates the matching of children with adult users

7 who, if interested in matching with a child, are unlikely to have that child’s best interest in mind.

8 Snap recommends people or groups the minor should “add” or otherwise connect with via the

9 Snapchat product. Snap calls this feature “Quick Add,” On information and belief, Snap

10 historically operated its Quick Add feature in connection with minor accounts and with sufficient

11 frequency that it is almost certain that one or more of the deceased children connected with dealers

12 because of this product feature.

13 150. When combined, Snap’s product features are a hazard to minors, for numerous

14 reasons. For example, Snap’s direct-messaging products are more dangerous when coupled with

15 minor accounts of which parents have no knowledge (or means to monitor) and do not consent;

16 and when combined with Snap’s recommendation features.

17 151. Likewise, Snap’s ephemeral messaging feature and marketing of the same is the

18 reason most drug dealers choose Snapchat and, more specifically, open a Snapchat account for the

19 express purpose of selling drugs to minors. These dealers believe that Snapchat will make it all but

20 impossible for them to get caught selling drugs to minors, including because Snap will delete all

21 photos and messages they send and will provide them with notice if anyone tries to make a copy

22 of those communications. And they’re not wrong. Moreover, Snap could just as easily make its

23 product ephemeral as between users, while making clear to users that Snap itself retains copies of

24 all data for a period of 12 months (or more) as required in the event of request from law

25 enforcement and in the case of minor users whose parents may have a right to such data.

26 152. Snap’s myriad of harmful features provided thousands (if not tens or hundreds of

27 thousands) of dealers with minor clientele and access (to the point of Snap recommending more

28 kids to whom they could deal with a simple “Add”), complete lack of parental oversight (in many

COMPLAINT 41
 1 cases, parents do not even know that their children opened Snapchat accounts), and a literal road

2 map to find these kids for purposes of selling them drugs.

3 L. Snap is Liable as Developer, Designer, Manufacturer, Distributor, and Marketer of

4 its Product, Irrespective of Any Content Provided, Posted, or Created by Third

5 Parties

6 153. Plaintiffs seek to hold Snap accountable for its own alleged acts and omissions.

7 Plaintiffs’ claims arise from Snap’s status as a developer, designer, manufacturer, distributor, and

8 marketing of dangerously defective social media products, as well as Snap’s own statements and

9 actions, not as the speaker or publisher of third-party content.

10 154. Snap has designed its products to be addictive and dangerous, especially to minors.

11 It has developed and modified product features like the continuous loop feed and push notifications

12 and incentivizes minors to stay on the product as long as possible, including through unknown and

13 changing rewards systems and product designs that appeal specifically to minor users’ brain

14 development.

15 155. Snap has also designed specific product features that serve no utility with regard to

16 operation of the Snapchat product, but that encourage and abet persons in the creation of Snapchat

17 accounts for the specific purpose of engaging in illegal activities such as dealing drugs to minors.

18 Snap has actual knowledge of these harms, and their causal connection to its product designs and

19 features and has made a deliberate decision to stay the course regardless.

20 156. The Snap product design, with its disappearing text and lack of solid user

21 verification features, is perfectly tailored for dealers to sell drugs without detection by law

22 enforcement or even the app.

23 157. Various Snap products, such as Snap Maps and My Eyes Only, further encourage

24 and aid dangerous users, and often enable them to get away with the harms they are causing to

25 minor users – to be clear, this is not because of the availability of a social media product, but

26 Snap’s specific product features.

27 158. Snap has actual knowledge of these harms to minors yet consistently opts for

28 prioritization of profit over the health and well-being of its minor users.

COMPLAINT 42
 1 159. For example, Snap has made the choice to not warn minor users or their parents of

2 known dangers arising from anticipated use of its Snapchat product. These dangers are unknown

3 to ordinary consumers but are known to Snap, nor do these dangers do not arise from third-party

4 content contained on Snaps social media platforms. To the contrary, Snap:

5 a. Designs and constantly re-designs its social media products to attract and

6 addict teens and children, its “priority” user group.

7 b. Designs and continues to operate its social media products to ensure that

8 teens and children can obtain unfettered access, even over parental
9 objection.
10 c. Knows or should know when teens and children are opening multiple
11 accounts and when they are accessing Snap’s products excessively and in
12 the middle of the night.
13 d. Designs and distributes products that it knows are inherently dangerous to
14 minor users, such as direct messaging features, Quick Add
15 recommendations, Snap Map, My Eyes Only, and Snap’s signature
16
“disappearing” messages.
17
160. All of the product changes and warnings at issue in this case are ones Snap could
18
have made and given in connection its social media product and product features unilaterally and
19
regardless of any content or any one drug dealer or bad actor.
20
161. Plaintiffs are not claiming that Snap must supervise or monitor every user
21
communication or post, or even use its technology – as it could – to identify and report users who
22
have chosen to use the Snapchat product to sell drugs. Plaintiffs are claiming that Snap has a legal
23
duty to not design and/or operate its products in a manner that it knows to be causing harm to
24
minor users, that it has a duty to not conceal material information relating to user safety and to
25
provide reasonable and necessary warnings to users and their parents, and that it may not
26
knowingly and deliberately design, manufacture, and/or distribute products with known design
27
defects and/or safety issues, particularly where Snap can address and resolve those issues at
28
minimal time and expense.

COMPLAINT 43
 1 162. The cost of designing safer social media products and fixing known defects is

2 negligible. In fact, each of the above examples could be addressed in a matter of hours, not days.

3 But also, Snap’s defective and/or inherently dangerous products serve no countervailing purpose

4 for consumers. That is, unlike common products such as cell phones and text messaging

5 applications utilized in connection with cell phones, Snap’s disappearing messages, user

6 recommendations (“Quick Add”), hidden data vault and incinerator (“My Eyes Only”), public

7 profile settings, and similar product features serve no critical or beneficial purposes to society at

8 large. They are not critical or beneficial to anyone by Snap itself and, even then, only because of

9 the astronomical profits Snap is making from these inherently hazardous products.

10 M. Snap’s Product is Uniquely Popular Among Drug Dealers, and its Features

11 Encourage, Enable, and Facilitate Homicides via Fentanyl-Laced Prescription Drug

12 Sales

13 163. Snap knows that it is designing its Snapchat social media product to be as addictive

14 as possible to its users, and in particular, its minor users. Snap likewise knows that it is designing

15 and distributed specific products and product features that make it particularly popular among

16 minors, as well as adults who intend to exploit, abuse, and otherwise engage in illegal activities at

17 the expense of Snap’s minor users – including Snapchat Dealers.

18 164. On information and belief, Snap appreciated the risks of harm to its young users

19 prior to or shortly after launch of its products and product features and made calculated business

20 decisions to proceed regardless. This is a common practice among its primary competitors in the

21 social media space, and Snap is no exception.

22 165. Snap knew or should have known of the drug-related deaths of minors and young

23 adults that its Snapchat product would cause. But also, Snap has actual knowledge of the drug-

24 related deaths of minors and young adults that its product is causing, and Snap continues to design,

25 manufacture, and distribute Snapchat in manner that causes those harms anyway.

26 166. Snap’s popularity among teens skyrocketed in 2013, coinciding with “significant

27 increases in overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids, particularly those involving illicitly

28

COMPLAINT 44
 1 manufactured Fentanyl” among people under 30.48 The meteoric rise of Snapchat and the meteoric

2 and unprecedented rise of fentanyl-related drug deaths among America’s youth is no coincidence.

3 The two are related and Snap knows that its product is contributing to and resulting in many of

4 these deaths – including each of the deaths at issue in this complaint.

5 167. Historic trends have shown increases in overdose deaths in the U.S. as at least

6 somewhat tracking increased drug supplies – but those overdose deaths involved adults. Children

7 do not typically run in the same circles as seasoned drug dealers and have no access or means to

8 obtain illicit drugs while living in their parents’ home. Snapchat has singlehandedly changed all

9 of that – it not only found a way to sneak past the parents of millions of teen and young adult

10 Snapchat users, as some of its competing social media products have done, but then created a

11 product that encourages, enables, and facilitates drug dealer access to America’s youth. To be

12 clear, this is not an issue for all of the social media products available to kids. This is a Snapchat

13 issue, as Snap is responsible for a statistically significant percentage of the unprecedented, fentanyl

14 caused deaths among America’s youth.

15 168. This is an epidemic Snap started through its unique and wildly popular social media

16 products and maintained in its effort to stay relevant. On information and belief, if someone were

17 to survey every family who lost a child between the ages of 14 to 18 to fentanyl poisoning in 2020

18 and 2021 and confirmed where the fatal and illegal drug was purchased, the origination of a

19 statistically significant (if not overwhelming) number would trace back to Snapchat, with relatively

20 few attributed to other social media products.

21 169. This case is about America’s children, and Snapchat’s dangerous product design,

22 active encouragement, facilitation, and even knowledge that its product is causing and contributing

23 to the preventable deaths of hundreds if not thousands of children. In the vast majority of these

24 instances, these are not people these children knew in real life or could have found through other

25 social media products. These were Snapchat Dealers who were using the Snapchat product because

26 of the product features Snap provides them – such as disappearing messages, “Quick Add,” Stories,

27 “My Eyes Only” data vault, location and tracking tools, emojis the dealers could use to disguise

28
48
https://www.cdc.gov/opioids/data/analysis-resources.html

COMPLAINT 45
 1 their illegal activities, data they could use to find more kids, and several other product features.

2 170. Snap has turned the heretofore cottage industry of drug dealing to kids into a multi-

3 million-dollar franchise – from which Snap itself has profited the most.

4 171. Starting in 2021, New York Times (NYT) published multiple stories announcing

5 that the United States had recorded a record number of drug overdoses during a 12-month period

6 (April 2020 to April 2021), attributing it to “stealthy, steady, and deadly” fentanyl sales. (Inside

7 Fentanyl’s Mounting Death Toll: ‘This is Poison’, November 20, 2021).

8 172. In the history of the United States there has never been a deadlier year for drug

9 overdoses than the time period during which the majority of these Plaintiffs tragically lost their

10 child to prescription pills lethally laced with fentanyl and sold through Snapchat.

11 173. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration recovered 20.4 million counterfeit

12 pills last year alone, and experts predict that this is a small percentage of the total number created.

13 According to its researchers, four out of every ten tablets they recovered contained deadly

14 quantities of fentanyl.

15 174. In another NYT article, California District Attorney for Placer County Morgan Gire

16 stated, “Social media is almost exclusively the way they get the pills,” and “About 90 percent of

17 the pills that you’re buying from a dealer on social media now are fentanyl.” (Fentanyl Tainted

18 Pills Bought on Social Media Cause Youth Drug Deaths to Soar, May 19, 2022).

19 175. The same NYT article discussed how in fall of 2021, the D.E.A. uncovered 76

20 incidents involving drug traffickers who marketed using emojis and code words on e-commerce

21 platforms and social media applications. And more to the point, the most popular social media

22 product for these illegal drug sales (and resulting deaths) is Snapchat. None of the other social

23 media products come close.

24 176. Snapchat is the app of choice and the deadliest when it comes to the death of

25 America’s children because of its product offerings and designs, its marketing and appeal to

26 America’s youth, and Snap’s knowledge and consistent failures to warn or even to act when given

27 the choice of protecting its youngest users from known and reported dangers vs. more money,

28 power, and popularity.

COMPLAINT 46
 1 V. PLAINTIFF SPECIFIC ALLEGATIONS

2 177. This lawsuit is not about our children having access to drugs, it is about drugs

3 having access to our children. Each of the following children (pre-teens, teens, and young adults)

4 were familiar with and trusted the Snapchat product. Some of them knew about Snap’s silly photo

5 filters from the time they were young, others learned about them from friends at school. In all

6 instances, they believed that Snapchat was a fun and silly product, designed with them in mind,

7 and distributed to them for entertainment purposes.

8 178. They believed that Snapchat was free and had no knowledge or understanding of

9 the designs Snap was using to hook them to its product—encouraging and pushing them to use

10 Snapchat in excessive and harmful ways—or of the complex and propriety technologies Snap was

11 designing, distributing, and using to steer and control their connections and experiences, in pursuit

12 of engagement and growth.

13 179. In each instance, they were connected to drug advertising and other harmful

14 content, paid advertisements, and experiences by Snapchat itself. Snap connected them to

15 Snapchat Drug Dealers via its deliberate design and programming decisions, and these dealers

16 chose Snapchat for several, specific reasons and used the Snapchat product, and its unique and

17 uniquely dangerous features, to find new children to whom they could sell.

18 180. Snap provided the mechanisms through which these dealers were able to find these

19 users and even actively connected these dealers to children through its connection and feed

20 products. The products, features, and settings that enabled these dealers to find these children

21 include, but are not limited to, Snap’s public profile settings, Quick Add user recommendation

22 algorithm, Snap Map location features, unrestricted direct messaging products, and tools that allow

23 dealers to identify nearby teens based on “friends,” public Stories posts, and the like. The dealers

24 described below also used these features to find new clientele, including the children described

25 below, and would never have been connected with or found them but for the Snapchat product.

26 181. Young Snapchat users routinely receive unsolicited direct messages and

27 communications from Snapchat drug dealers, which dealers find them through this combination

28 of Snap products, features, and tools. To be clear, this includes data points Snap itself collects and

COMPLAINT 47
 1 then uses to connect complete strangers. For example, if a user searches for drug-related content

2 or uses terms that appear to be drug related, Snap may then use that information – the fact of the

3 search and its subject matter – to connect the user to potential drug dealers. This is a horrific

4 outcome, but even more horrific is the fact that Snap knows or should know that it is operating its

5 social media product as a drug dealer matchmaking service, and that children are dying as a result.

6 182. These Snapchat features are dangerous in themselves, but are even more dangerous

7 to young users when combined with Snap’s (a) marketing, aimed at children and teens and

8 providing parents with a false sense of security as to the nature and safety of the Snapchat product,

9 (b) disappearing messages and the My Eyes Only data vault, which products convinced both these

10 users and dealers that they could use Snapchat without any appreciable risk of being caught (by

11 parents or authorities), (c) failure to verify age and identity, resulting in Snap’s distribution to

12 unsupervised minors and addiction of users prior to when they turned 18, and (d) push notification

13 communications and extended use designs—such as pull to refresh, endless scroll, gamification,

14 and rewards systems—which are effective at addicting young users to the Snapchat product.

15 183. Snap knows or has reason to know of the above-described harms and potential

16 harms but does not warn users or their parents.

17 184. Snap designs and distributes its product to appear fun, safe, and age appropriate,

18 while interfering with parental rights and luring children, teens, and young adults into a virtual

19 room with predators and drug dealers who benefit from the endless supply of young users and

20 Snap’s assurances that they can exploit and harm children with no consequences whatsoever.

21 185. Snap and its leadership bear responsibility for the deaths of these children. They

22 know that their products are defective and/or inherently harmful and stayed the course despite

23 hundreds if not thousands of Snapchat caused crimes and deaths reported to them in the last several

24 years. These decisions and Snap’s marketing, design, distribution, and programming decisions

25 caused the needless death and/or harms to each of the following children

26
27
28

COMPLAINT 48
 1 A. Snap Proximately Caused the Fentanyl Death of Juan Jiménez Trujillo

2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15 (May 13, 2004 – February 23, 2021)
16 186. Juan Jiménez Trujillo was born on May 13, 2004, and lived in Miami, Florida.

17 187. Juan attended Ronald Reagan High School. He was a funny, outgoing, and fiercely

18 intelligent young man, with dreams of attending business school after high school.

19 188. Juan got his first cell phone when he was 12 or 13 years old. He was in middle

20 school and his mom, Plaintiff Diana Trujillo, needed a way to get ahold of him. Shortly after

21 getting that phone, he opened his first Snapchat account – which he opened with his mother’s

22 knowledge or consent.

23 189. Diana did not know much about the Snapchat app, other than what Snap advertised

24 to the world, i.e. that it was a silly communication app designed for kids and used by kids to send

25 disappearing photos to other kids they know in real life. She did not like how much her son wanted

26 to use Snapchat, however, so she made him remove the app from his phone. But this did not stop

27 Juan from using Snapchat and did not stop Snap from distributing Snapchat to her minor son.

28 190. Snap claims that if you are under 18 you must have parental consent to use its

COMPLAINT 49
 1 product but makes no meaningful effort to confirm consent and turns the other way even in

2 circumstances where it knows or should know that such consent is lacking – as it did with Juan.

3 Snap also claims that you cannot open more than one personal account but makes no meaningful

4 effort to restrict the opening of multiple accounts and made no such effort with Juan. In fact, Juan

5 closed and opened several Snapchat accounts. Each time his mother discovered an account and

6 required him to close and/or remove it from his device, he simply went back to Snapchat and re-

7 installed and/or opened new accounts. Snap’s product design and distribution decisions interfered

8 with Diana’s parental rights, ensuring that Juan – and millions of children like him – could access

9 the Snapchat product, irrespective of safety and parental consent.

10 191. Juan’s use of Snapchat resulted in a severe and steady decline in his mental health.

11 192. Prompted by the addictive design of Snap’s product, and the constant notifications

12 Snap pushed to Juan 24 hours a day, Juan developed a compulsion to engage with Snapchat at all

13 hours and had trouble sleeping at night as a result. He began having trouble sleeping for the first

14 time in his life and began suffering from anxiety as a result of the Snapchat caused sleep

15 deprivation and other mental health harms.

16 193. His parents began catching him awake at night on his phone. In an attempt to

17 address this issue, they made Juan leave his phone plugged in at a desk in the hall each night,

18 which common area they kept an eye on. However, Juan already had developed a dependency on

19 Snapchat– an outcome Snap specifically designed its product to cause, particularly in children,

20 teens, and young adults – and would sneak his phone or try gaining access to Snapchat every

21 chance he got. Diana engaged the help of school counselors, as well as outside counseling and

22 testing, but Juan continued to suffer from these Snapchat caused harms until the time of his death.

23 194. Like millions of parents and practitioners, Diana and Juan’s treatment providers did

24 not know and had no way of knowing the harms Snapchat was causing to Juan. Snap knew or

25 should have known it simply chose to continue prioritizing revenue over the lives of children like

26 and including Juan.

27 195. Snap also markets, designs, and distributes its products—including through the use

28 of disappearing or time-sensitive messaging features and secret, self-destructing data vaults, and

COMPLAINT 50
 1 failure to verify age and parental consent—to frustrate parents like Diana from exercising their

2 rights and duties to monitor and limit their children’s use of those products. There was literally

3 nothing Diana could do to stop Juan from opening new Snapchat accounts, which Snap continued

4 to provide despite Juan’s age and the harms its product was causing him – harms Snap knew or

5 should have known about, including because of the types of data it collects and utilizes with every

6 user, and collected and utilized with Juan.

7 196. Juan’s use of Snapchat was like an addiction, and when Diana tried to restrict such

8 access, he would respond one of two ways - with uncharacteristic anger or with sadness and

9 depression, for example, refusing to get out of bed because he felt that he had nothing to live for.

10 197. Snap actively concealed the defects and dangers of its product and failed to provide

11 warnings, making it impossible for Diana to protect her child.

12 198. As proximate result of Snap’s products and features, i.e. push notifications, user

13 recommendations, interface and operational extended use designs, rewards and gamification

14 features, etc. – Juan began suffering from severe mental health harms, including, but not limited

15 to, social media compulsion, sleep deprivation, and anxiety. These are harms Snap also knows or

16 should know its product is causing in a significant number of minor users.

17 199. But also, Snap then began targeting and exposing Juan to drugs for the first time in

18 his live through its recommended Stories and user connection/Quick Add products. Specifically,

19 Snapchat provided Juan with two Stories feeds, one showed Stories posted by his “Friends” and

20 the other encouraged him to watch Stories determined by Snapchat itself as being of potential

21 interest and/or popularity specifically for Juan. The recommended Stories were not Stories or

22 subject matters Juan searched for, requested, or otherwise wanted to see. On the contrary, these

23 were Stories and subject matters Snap’s own systems decided to connect him with via Snap’s

24 deliberate programming choices – that is, Snap programmed (and still programs) its connection

25 technologies to prioritize engagement, resulting in various forms of discrimination and harm. In

26 Juan’s case, like with many children, teens, and young adults, Snap determined that exposing and

27 connect Juan – a teenage boy – to marijuana themed content would most likely keep his attention.

28 200. Juan did not open a Snapchat account to find or learn about drugs and had no

COMPLAINT 51
 1 interest in drugs at the time when his account was opened; but Snap changed all of that. It targeted

2 him with drug-themed content, normalizing and glorifying drug use.

3 201. Snap also began connecting drug dealers to Juan via its public profile settings, user

4 recommendation algorithm, and mapping and location features, as it does to millions of underage

5 Snapchat users. On information and belief, Juan received multiple Quick Add requests from other

6 Snapchat users he did not know in real life and, because of Snap’s gamification and other features

7 that encourage kids to accept those requests, he accepted them. Among the strangers to whom

8 Snap connected Juan were nearby Snapchat dealers – persons he did not know in real life and

9 would not have met but for Snap’s product decision, programming, distribution, and operational

10 decisions. Snapchat essentially designed and programmed its user connection systems to increase

11 engagement at any costs which, in the case of minor users, included affirmatively identifying and

12 directing predators and drug dealers to those minor users.

13 202. At Snap’s urging, Juan decided that he wanted to try marijuana. He was able to

14 purchase marijuana through people at school but also, and most prominently, Snap connected him

15 to Snapchat Drug Dealers who not only sold marijuana to Juan but would deliver it to his home.

16 Snapchat is known among teens and young adults as being the go-to retailer location for these

17 types of services, which have made millions of children accessible to drug dealers who otherwise

18 would not have been.

19 203. Juan trusted the Snapchat product, which he had been using, without his parents’

20 consent when he was 12 or 13. Snapchat was familiar and seemed safe to him, which trust Snap

21 cultivates through its marketing to and targeting of minors, building brand loyalty and familiarity,

22 and populating its product with various forms of games, cartoons, silly filters, and other features

23 with which young people associate. Juan did not believe that Snapchat was dangerous, nor did

24 Snapchat warn him – or anyone – of its dangers.

25 204. What Snap knew but chose to conceal from consumers and parents is that the most

26 dangerous drug dealers use Snapchat to find and sell their drugs to kids. Snapchat is the go-to app,

27 and in many cases, drug dealers sell exclusively on Snapchat and refuse to sell or even

28 communicate via other social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok – even though

COMPLAINT 52
 1 those apps also provide “friending” features that enable users to connect with strangers and

2 unrestricted direct messaging tools that enable users to connect with kids. The reason is because

3 Snapchat promises its users that their messages disappear, and that Snap will erase any trace of

4 illegal conduct, including that Snap will notify them if anyone takes a screenshot of their content.

5 205. Snap allows dealers to advertise their wares, via public Stories, and those Stories

6 also disappear, making it difficult, in many cases, impossible for them to get caught.

7 206. Moreover, Snapchat advertises for dealers through its unique technologies and

8 product features. For example, once a dealer finds or friends one high school kid, they can use that

9 connection and Snap’s location, Quick Add, and Snap Score features to find, engage, and exploit

10 hundreds, even thousands, of high schoolers. On information and belief, Snap advertised for and

11 connected dealers to Juan in this way.

12 207. On information and belief, Juan began receiving Quick Add requests from dealers

13 he had never met, but who found him via his “Friends” list or other Snapchat provided tools and

14 then had access to him via Snap’s Direct Messaging tools. Many of these dealers use pill emojis

15 in their Snapchat handles, or other Snap-permitted symbols to communicate their status. Likewise,

16 Snapchat was filling his “Stories” feeds with drug-related content – content Snap recommended,

17 and that Juan did not initially ask for, request, or even want. Snap was enabling, encouraging, and

18 helping to sell drugs to minors, and profited handsomely as a result.

19 208. What Juan did not know and had never heard of was that kids were dying of fentanyl

20 poisoning after purchasing counterfeit drugs from Snapchat Drug Dealers. On information and

21 belief, Juan did not know what Fentanyl was and did not know that he could die from taking what

22 many Snapchat dealers were openly and regularly advertising and selling on Snapchat. On the

23 contrary, he knew a lot of kids who used Snapchat to obtain marijuana; he also trusted the Snapchat

24 product and had never seen any warnings on or posted by Snap to his account about these issues.

25 On the contrary, Snap allows drug dealers to advertise and post openly and regularly to kids.

26 209. On February 22, 2021, Juan connected with a Snapchat dealer who offered to

27 deliver a candy with marijuana to the parking lot near his home. Juan did not have a car, so could

28 not have obtained marijuana but for the preponderance of Snapchat Drug Dealers on the Snapchat

COMPLAINT 53
 1 platform willing to deliver.

2 210. On information and belief, this was a Snapchat Drug Dealer who communicated

3 with Juan only via Snapchat and who Juan would not have been connected to but for the Snapchat

4 product. Juan believed he was buying marijuana and had no reason to think otherwise.

5 211. Juan told his family he was going out for a short walk, headed to a nearby parking

6 lot, stopped to meet with the Snapchat dealer, and purchased what he believed to be a marijuana

7 edible candy. The entire transaction took two minutes, then Juan headed home. That evening, he

8 told his parents he was headed to his room to do homework, deposited his cell phone in the

9 common area as he did every night, and closed his door.

10 212. On the morning of February 23, 2021, Diana Trujillo woke up at 6:00 a.m., and

11 went to wake up her son only to find him dead in his bed. He still had the school issued computer

12 open on his chest, as he had started his homework after taking what he believed to be a marijuana

13 edible candy – but that was laced with lethal doses of fentanyl, ketamine, and cocaine instead.

14 213. Juan died of Fentanyl poisoning on February 23, 2021. Snapchat’s defective design

15 and Snap’s failure to warn were substantial factors in causing Juan Jiménez Trujillo’s death.

16 214. Diana Trujillo has been in contact with and/or met several other families who have

17 lost their children to fentanyl poisoning. All of those involving a drug dealer connected to the

18 child by social media involve the Snapchat social media product. She has not spoken with, met,

19 or seen any families whose children were connected to the drug dealer who killed them via TikTok,

20 Instagram, or Facebook.

21 215. Juan’s family members have suffered severe emotional distress from the loss, and

22 the traumatic and invasive nature of his death.

23
24
25
26
27
28

COMPLAINT 54
 1 B. Snap Proximately Caused the Fentanyl Death of Lauren Lujan

2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19 (March 11, 2002 – March 30, 2020)

20 216. Lauren Lujan was born on March 11, 2002, and lived in Centennial, Colorado.

21 217. Lauren was a happy child, who loved animals and dreamed of being a veterinarian

22 or a vet tech. Lauren had a gift for finding beauty in everything and would often text her mom,

23 Plaintiff Patti Lujan, when they were not together and tell her to look up into the sky because it

24 was a beautiful one that night.

25 218. Lauren got her first smart phone around 12 or 13 years old. Their phone carrier

26 was offering some sort of a deal on smart phones and her parents, Plaintiffs Patti and John Lujan,

27 finally agreed.

28 219. Lauren downloaded and began using the Snapchat social media product without her

COMPLAINT 55
 1 parents’ knowledge or consent. Her parents cannot be certain but believed this happened within

2 the first year or so of Lauren getting her phone. Patti and John did not have a Snapchat account,

3 so it was not on their radar, and what little they did hear about the social media product made it

4 seem harmless and safe for kids. Specifically, Snap advertised its product as just a camera app,

5 which allowed kids to create and exchange silly, filtered photos with other kids they knew in real

6 life, not strangers. Patti and John did not know about Snap’s extended use designs, its public

7 profile settings, location finding tools, disappearing Stories posts (or use of those by drug dealers

8 to sell to kids), or any of Snap’s other defective and/or inherently dangerous product features. Nor

9 did Snap advertise or disclose these features or include any warnings on the product itself.

10 220. What Lauren’s parents did not know – in fact, no one knew but Snap until very

11 recently – was that Snap’s statements were not true. The Snapchat product was not designed with

12 the safety of minor users in mind, on the contrary, Snap operated and distributed its product at all

13 times relevant in a manner intended to increase its own engagement at expense of user safety.

14 Lauren’s parents did not know and could not have discovered the harms being caused by Snap’s

15 extended use designs (its Streaks, Scores, or other hidden reward features that create harmful

16 dependencies in kids), or its public profile settings, location finding tools, disappearing Stories

17 posts (or use of those by drug dealers to sell to kids), or any of Snap’s other defective and/or

18 inherently dangerous product features. They also did not know that strangers could and were using

19 Snapchat to connect with their child, which types of design, distribution, and operational decisions

20 have only just started coming to light after the Facebook whistleblower disclosed thousands of

21 internal records detailing how social media companies like Meta Platforms Inc. and, as relevant

22 here, Snap Inc., market, design, distribute, and operate their products in late 2021 and 2022.

23 221. Even now, Snap continues to conceal the defective and/or inherently dangerous

24 aspects of its product and engaged in a several year-long campaign to cover up its role in the

25 fentanyl poisoning crisis among America’s youth.

26 222. Lauren’s use of Snapchat resulted in a steady decline in her mental health.

27 223. By ninth and tenth grades and, prompted by the addictive design of Snap’s product,

28 and the constant notifications Snap pushed to Lauren 24 hours a day, Lauren developed a

COMPLAINT 56
 1 compulsion to engage with Snapchat as often as possible and did not want to do anything else. She

2 was obsessed with streaks to the point where she would become frantic if her mother tried to take

3 the phone when she had not yet done her “Streaks” for the day. Lauren began struggling with

4 anxiety and depression around the time she first obtained access to social media, and Snapchat

5 exacerbated those harms, as it does with a significant number of American teens.

6 224. Snap markets, designs, and distributes its products—including through the use of

7 disappearing or time-sensitive messaging features and secret, self-destructing data vaults, and

8 failure to verify age and parental consent—to frustrate parents like Patti and John from exercising

9 their rights and duties to monitor and limit their children’s use of those products.

10 225. Lauren not only had access to Snapchat without her parents’ knowledge or consent,

11 but Snapchat’s extended use features and designs created and encouraged a harmful dependency

12 on its product. Patti and John’s attempts to restrict or limit Lauren’s access caused her to lose

13 control. She would scream and yell. She felt like she needed the Snapchat social media product,

14 and that she could not live without it. What Snapchat knew, but Lauren, Patti, and John did not,

15 was that these were dependencies by design.

16 226. Snap actively concealed the defects and dangers of its product and failed to provide

17 warnings, making it impossible for Patti and John to protect their child.

18 227. As proximate result of Snap’s products and features, i.e. push notifications, user

19 recommendations, interface and operational extended use designs, rewards and gamification

20 features, etc. – Lauren, then a minor, began suffering from severe mental health harms, including,

21 but not limited to, social media compulsion, anxiety, and depression. These are harms Snap knows

22 or should know its product is causing in a significant number of minor users.

23 228. Patti and John never consented to their child’s use of a dangerous social media

24 product, which started well before she turned 18. Moreover, had Snap been honest about the

25 design and risk of its products, had it simply provided reasonable disclosures and warnings, they

26 would never have allowed it in their home and would have taken early and decisive steps to protect

27 their child from the Snapchat product. Instead, Lauren’s parents believed that Snapchat was a silly

28 photo app safe and made for kids. They had seen its logo, and they understood that Lauren could

COMPLAINT 57
 1 use it to send photos with only people she knew in real life – not strangers.

2 229. Instead, Snap began exposing Lauren to drug-related content and advertisements

3 and connected her to Snapchat Drug Dealers via its public profile settings, user recommendation

4 algorithm, and mapping and location features, as it does to millions of underage Snapchat users.

5 Lauren received multiple Quick Add requests from other Snapchat users she did not know in real

6 life and, because of Snap’s gamification and other features that encourage kids to accept those

7 requests, she accepted them. Among the strangers to whom Snap connected Lauren were nearby

8 Snapchat dealers – persons Lauren did not know in real life and would not have met but for Snap’s

9 product decision, programming, distribution, and operational decisions.

10 230. Snapchat essentially designed and programmed its user connection systems to

11 increase engagement at any costs which, in the case of minor users, included affirmatively

12 identifying and directing predators and drug dealers to those minor users.

13 231. Lauren trusted the Snapchat product, which she had been using for years. Snapchat

14 was familiar and seemed safe to her, which trust Snap cultivates through its marketing to and

15 targeting of minors, building brand loyalty and familiarity, and populating its product with various

16 forms of games, cartoons, silly filters, and other features with which young people associate.

17 Lauren did not believe that Snapchat was dangerous, nor did Snapchat warn her of its dangers.

18 232. In March of 2020, Lauren turned 18. Lauren had stomach issues and chronic pain,

19 including because of loose ligaments, and had been telling her mom for months how excited she

20 was to turn 18 because she could finally obtain a prescription for medical marijuana to help. Patti

21 knew that Lauren occasionally smoked marijuana to help with her pain but has no reason to think

22 that Lauren was also self-medicating with prescription drugs.

23 233. On the evening of March 29, 2020, Lauren was on Spring Break and staying at her

24 father’s house. She left for a couple of hours, which is when her parents believe she met up with

25 the Snapchat Drug Dealer to whom Snapchat connected her. John stayed up late to make sure his

26 daughter got home safe. She planned to have some friends over to hang out for the night, and

27 when she returned, she shouted to her dad as she passed by, “I’m home. I love you. Goodnight.”

28 John believed his daughter was safe, at home, hanging out with friends. What he didn’t know, and

COMPLAINT 58
 1 had no way to know, was that Snapchat had connected Lauren to a Snapchat Drug Dealer who sold

2 Lauren what she believed to be Percocet.

3 234. On the morning of March 30, 2020, one of Lauren’s friends ran into her father’s

4 room and told him that Lauren was not breathing. John raced to her room, called 9-1-1, and tried

5 to resuscitate her. The first responders took her to the emergency room, and they continued trying

6 to save 18-year-old Lauren’s life. For hours, they told Lauren’s mother that they had a faint

7 heartbeat and that they were trying to keep her daughter alive, but ultimately, Lauren died.

8 235. What Lauren had purchased through Snapchat and believed to be the prescription

9 drug, Percocet, was instead a pill laced with deadly amounts of fentanyl.

10 236. On information and belief, Lauren was not the first or only child to whom Snap

11 connected this same Snapchat Drug Dealer, and she likely is not the only child to have died as a

12 result. Despite this, however, the police told Patti that there was little they could do because of

13 how Snap designs its Snapchat product. Once detectives knew that this was a Snapchat related

14 homicide, they appeared to give up.

15 237. Lauren died of Fentanyl poisoning on March 30, 2020. Snapchat’s defective design

16 and Snap’s failure to warn were substantial factors in causing Lauren Lujan’s death.

17 238. Lauren’s family members have suffered severe emotional distress from the loss,

18 and the traumatic and invasive nature of her death.

19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28

COMPLAINT 59
 1 C. Snap Proximately Caused the Fentanyl Death of Cole Brown

2
3
4
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6
7
8
9
10
11
12 (December 19, 2002 – September 2, 2021)
13 239. Cole Brown was born on December 19, 2002, and lived in Lincoln, California.
14 240. Cole was a happy and active child. He did well in school and enjoyed riding his
15 bike around his neighborhood with friends and playing baseball.
16 241. Cole got his first cell phone around 12 years old. Plaintiff Rebekah Brown cannot
17 be certain when her son began using Snapchat but believes that Cole opened his first Snapchat
18 account shortly after he got his phone, as she became aware of his Snapchat use several months
19 after. At the time, however, she believed that Snapchat was a fun and safe app for kids.
20 242. Cole opened a Snapchat account without his parents’ knowledge or consent. Snap
21 claims to prohibit use of its product to children under 13 and to require parental consent for all
22 children under 18 but distributed its product to Cole when he was only 12 years old regardless.
23 Snap concealed the defects and dangers of its product, advertising Snapchat as just a camera app,
24 which allows kids to create and exchange silly, filtered photos with other kids they know in real
25 life, not strangers. Rebekah did not know about Snap’s extended use designs, its public profile
26 settings, location finding tools, disappearing Stories posts (or use of those by drug dealers to sell
27 to kids), or any of Snap’s other defective and/or inherently dangerous product features.
28 243. Had she known the truth, she would have taken steps to prevent her son from

COMPLAINT 60
 1 accessing the Snapchat product. In fact, her youngest child is not allowed to use social media and

2 is required to clear everything with Rebekah that she wants to put on the phone.

3 244. What Cole’s parents did not know – in fact, no one knew but Snap until very

4 recently – was that Snap’s statements about its product were not the truth. The Snapchat product

5 was not designed with the safety of minor users in mind, on the contrary, Snap operated and

6 distributed its product at all times relevant in a manner intended to increase its own engagement at

7 expense of user safety. Rebekah did not know and could not have discovered the harms being

8 caused by Snap’s extended use designs (its Streaks, Scores, or other hidden reward features that

9 create harmful dependencies in kids), or its public profile settings, location finding tools,

10 disappearing Stories posts (or use of those by drug dealers to sell to kids), or any of Snap’s other

11 defective and/or inherently dangerous product features. She also did not know that strangers could

12 and were using Snapchat to connect with her child, which types of design, distribution, and

13 operational decisions have only just started coming to light after the Facebook whistleblower

14 disclosed thousands of internal records detailing how social media companies like Meta Platforms

15 Inc. and, as relevant here, Snap Inc., market, design, distribute, and operate their products in late

16 2021 and 2022. Even then, Snapchat has continued to effectively conceal the truth, including by

17 the making of false or misleading statements to the media and Congress, and refusing to allow

18 researchers or regulators to obtain information as to how Snap is designing and operating its social

19 media product.

20 245. Cole’s use of Snapchat resulted in a steady decline in his mental health.

21 246. Prompted by the addictive design of Snap’s product, and the constant notifications

22 Snap pushed to Cole 24 hours a day, he developed a compulsion to engage with Snapchat at all

23 hours and had trouble sleeping at night as a result. He went from someone who slept well, to

24 someone who couldn’t sleep and began suffering from anxiety and depression as a result. In

25 retrospect, it is clear that the changes in Cole’s mental health occurred within months if not weeks

26 of when his use of the Snapchat product began.

27 247. Snap markets, designs, and distributes its products—including through the use of

28 disappearing or time-sensitive messaging features and secret, self-destructing data vaults, and

COMPLAINT 61
 1 failure to verify age and parental consent—to frustrate parents like Rebekah from exercising their

2 rights and duties to monitor and limit their children’s use of those products.

3 248. Cole’s use of Snapchat was like an addiction, and Rebekah’s attempts to restrict or

4 limit his access caused Cole to become frustrated and upset. When Rebekah tired taking his phone,

5 Cole would look for it and sneak it back when he could; or find other devices from which he could

6 access the Snapchat product when he could not.

7 249. When Cole was 12 or 13 years old, after Rebekah found out that he had opened a

8 Snapchat account without her knowledge or consent, she tried opening her own Snapchat to learn

9 more about the product. Unfortunately, she learned that Snap provided silly filters which users

10 could send to each other, and not much more. Snap did not advertise or disclose its more dangerous

11 features, did not provide parents with information on its product – even when parents went looking

12 – and still does not disclose to anyone how it is designing and programming its technologies.

13 Rebekah – and millions of parents like her – had no way to learn more about Snapchat, despite her

14 best efforts to do so.

15 250. Snap actively concealed the defects and dangers of its product and failed to provide

16 warnings, making it impossible for Rebekah to protect her child. Moreover, Snap designed its

17 product to ensure access by minors irrespective of parental consent or even the availability of

18 electronic devices at home. There was literally nothing Rebekah could do to prevent her child from

19 accessing Snapchat or Snapchat from distributing to her child.

20 251. As proximate result of Snap’s products and features, i.e. push notifications, user

21 recommendations, interface and operational extended use designs, rewards and gamification

22 features, etc. – Cole, then a 12-year-old child, began suffering from severe mental health harms,

23 including, but not limited to, social media compulsion, sleep deprivation, anxiety, and depression.

24 These are harms Snap knows or should know its product is causing in a significant number of

25 minor users.

26 252. Snap also began exposing Cole to drug related advertising and subject matters and

27 connecting drug dealers to Cole via its public profile settings, user connection technologies, and

28 mapping and location features, as it does to millions of underage Snapchat users. On information

COMPLAINT 62
 1 and belief, Cole received multiple Quick Add requests from other Snapchat users he did not know

2 in real life and, because of Snap’s gamification and other features that encourage kids to accept

3 those requests, he accepted them. Among the strangers to whom Snap connected Cole were nearby

4 Snapchat dealers – persons Cole did not know in real life and would not have met but for Snap’s

5 product decision, programming, distribution, and operational decisions.

6 253. Snapchat also does not implement (or reasonably implement) existing and available

7 technologies that would block access to its product by violating and unauthorized users. For

8 example, since Cole’s death, Rebekah has had videos taken down and flagged on other social

9 media platforms. This includes TikTok taking down a video she posted that included a gun, which

10 take-down happened almost immediately; and Facebook flagged her for talking openly about how

11 Fentanyl is killing our children. In both instances, the platforms took down the offending content,

12 as available and widely used technologies allowed them to do on an automated and/or operational

13 basis. In both instances, Rebekah was able to explain the situation and get the flags removed.

14 However, and to the best of her knowledge, she does not know anyone who has had similar

15 experiences on Snapchat. What Rebekah knows now but did not know when her son began using

16 Snapchat or even prior to his death, is that Snapchat is widely accepted as the social media product

17 where anything goes. Snapchat does not utilize existing and available technologies to protect even

18 its known minor users from known harms encouraged and amplified by Snapchat itself.

19 254. Snapchat allows Snapchat Drug Dealers to post whatever they want with impunity

20 and has chosen to bury its head in the sand for the sake of engagement and revenue – despite actual

21 knowledge that American teens have died and will continue to die as a result.

22 255. Snapchat designed and programmed its user connection systems to increase

23 engagement at any costs which, in the case of minor users, included affirmatively identifying and

24 directing predators and drug dealers to those minor users, including 12-year-old Cole Brown.

25 256. Cole trusted the Snapchat product, which he had been using for years. Snapchat

26 was familiar and seemed safe to him, which trust Snap cultivates through its marketing to and

27 targeting of minors, building brand loyalty and familiarity, and populating its product with various

28 forms of games, cartoons, silly filters, and other features with which young people associate. Cole

COMPLAINT 63
 1 did not believe and could not appreciate the fact that Snapchat was dangerous, nor did Snapchat

2 warn him of its dangers.

3 257. On May 14, 2021, Cole graduated from high school.

4 258. On August 31, 2021, he communicated with at least two Snapchat Drug Dealers,

5 and purchased what he believed to be Percocet.

6 259. Snapchat Drug Dealers choose to communicate via Snapchat instead of other social

7 media products because of Snap’s unique designs and product features, which help them find new,

8 young customers and assure them that they cannot get caught.

9 260. Cole died somewhere between the evening of September 1 and the morning of

10 September 2, 2021. He was staying in a hotel in Rocklin, California. He purchased through

11 Snapchat and the connections Snapchat facilitated and created what he believed to be a Percocet,

12 but that turned out to contain lethal doses of Fentanyl instead.

13 261. The detectives told Rebekah after Cole’s death that Snap has been uncooperative

14 with them in the past and does not provide information they need to find and convict these

15 Snapchat Drug Dealers; and that at least some of the evidence they would need to pursue Cole’s

16 killers would no longer exist because of how Snap designs and operates its product. That is, Snap

17 deletes critical evidence as a routine matter and has designed its product to work that way.

18 262. On September 2, 2021, after Cole’s death, he was still receiving calls, notifications,

19 and communications on Snapchat from Snapchat Drug Dealers, and police found enough

20 information in his device to know that Snap and/or the Snapchat Drug Dealers were sending him

21 drug menus and other advertising of illegal drugs via the Snapchat app.

22 263. Cole died of Fentanyl poisoning, and Snapchat’s defective design and Snap’s

23 failure to warn were substantial factors in causing Cole Brown’s death.

24 264. Rebekah has been in contact with and/or met several other families who have lost

25 their children to fentanyl poisoning. All of those involving a drug dealer connected to the child

26 by social media involve the Snapchat social media product.

27 265. Cole’s family members have suffered severe emotional distress from the loss, and

28 the traumatic and invasive nature of his death.

COMPLAINT 64
 1 D. Snap Proximately Caused the Fentanyl Death of Michael Leonardi

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6
7
8
9
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17
18 (August 22, 1999 – February 24, 2020)

19 266. Michael Leonardi was born on August 22, 1999. He grew up in Napa, California

20 and was living in Del Mar, California at the time of his death.

21 267. Michael was a typical kid. Michael was a presence and connected to people. He

22 enjoyed food, cooking, conversation, history, and social justice issues. Michael was a musician

23 and played the guitar since first grade and was recording music before he passed away. He played

24 sports – rugby in high school, basketball and Taekwondo in grade and middle school. He was well

25 liked and had many friendships.

26 268. Michael got his first cell phone when he was around 11 years old. His parents had

27 divorced, and they wanted him to have a way to keep in touch with them both.

28 269. Plaintiffs Ramona and Mark Leonardi cannot be certain when their child began

COMPLAINT 65
 1 using the Snapchat social media product but believe that Michael opened his first account

2 sometime around 7th or 8th grade, and possibly sooner. He did not ask her parents for permission

3 to use Snapchat, and they did not consent. Snap claims to require parental consent for all users

4 under 18 but does not undertake any actual or reasonable effort to verify the age of its users and

5 does not stop users from accessing its product even when Snap knows or should know that they

6 are underage and/or lack parental consent.

7 270. When Ramona and Mark did finally realize that their son was using the Snapchat

8 product, they also had no reason for concern as they understood that the product was marketed to

9 and made for kids. They believed that Snapchat was something kids used to take and send silly

10 filtered photos to friends, which photos then disappeared. They did not know about Snap’s

11 extended use designs, its public profile settings, location finding tools, disappearing Stories posts

12 (or use of those by drug dealers to sell to kids), connection technology, or any of Snap’s other

13 defective and/or inherently dangerous product features. Nor did Snap advertise or disclose these

14 features or include any warnings on the product itself. For these reasons, Ramona and Mark had

15 no reason or way to know about their son’s Snapchat use, and even once they became vaguely

16 aware of the Snapchat product, they had no reason to think that it was dangerous.

17 271. What Ramona and Mark did not know – in fact, no one knew but Snap until very

18 recently – was that Snap’s statements were not true. The Snapchat product was not designed with

19 the safety of minor users in mind, on the contrary, Snap operated and distributed its product at all

20 times relevant in a manner intended to increase its own engagement at expense of user safety.

21 Ramona and Mark did not know and could not have discovered the harms being caused by Snap’s

22 extended use designs (its Streaks, Scores, or other hidden reward features that create harmful

23 dependencies in kids), or its public profile settings, location finding tools, disappearing Stories

24 posts (or use of those by drug dealers to sell to kids), or any of Snap’s other defective and/or

25 inherently dangerous product features. They also did not know that strangers could and were using

26 Snapchat to connect with their child, which types of design, distribution, and operational decisions

27 have only just started coming to light after the Facebook whistleblower disclosed thousands of

28

COMPLAINT 66
 1 internal records detailing how social media companies like Meta Platforms Inc. and, as relevant

2 here, Snap Inc., market, design, distribute, and operate their products in late 2021 and 2022.

3 272. Snap actively concealed the defects and dangers of its product and failed to provide

4 warnings, making it impossible for Ramona to protect her child.

5 273. Ramona and Mark never consented to their child’s use of a dangerous social media

6 product, which started well before he turned 18. Had Snap been honest about the design and risk

7 of its products, had it simply provided reasonable disclosures and warnings, they would have taken

8 early and decisive steps to protect their child from the Snapchat product.

9 274. Snap also then began exposing Michael to drug advertising and content and began

10 connecting drug dealers to Michael via its public profile settings, user connection technologies,

11 and mapping and location features, as it does to millions of underage Snapchat users. On

12 information and belief, Michael received multiple Quick Add requests from other Snapchat users

13 he did not know in real life and, because of Snap’s gamification and other features that encourage

14 kids to accept those requests, he accepted them. Among the strangers to whom Snap connected

15 Michael were nearby Snapchat dealers – persons he did not know in real life and would not have

16 met but for Snap’s product decision, programming, distribution, and operational decisions.

17 275. Snapchat essentially designed and programmed its user connection systems to

18 increase engagement at any costs which included affirmatively identifying and directing predators

19 and drug dealers to children and young adult users.

20 276. Snapchat connected Michael to Snapchat Drug Dealers he did not know, and with

21 whom he would not have connected but for Snapchat and its various product features and tools –

22 including tools dealers use to find new customers, particularly, children, teens, and young adults,

23 such as public profiles, drug menu delivery via the Stories product, direct messaging, the Quick

24 Add user connection product, Snap location feature, and others.

25 277. Michael trusted the Snapchat product, which he had been using for years. Snapchat

26 was familiar and seemed safe to him, which trust Snap cultivates through its marketing to and

27 targeting of minors, building brand loyalty and familiarity, and populating its product with various

28 forms of games, cartoons, silly filters, and other features with which young people associate. He

COMPLAINT 67
 1 did not believe that Snapchat was dangerous, nor did Snapchat warn him of its dangers.

2 278. In February of 2020, Michael was attending community college in Del Mar,

3 California. He planned to transfer to UC Santa Barbara, and wanted to major in environmental

4 studies. He had also recently started a new job, working for a social media marketing company,

5 and shared a house with his friends/roommates.

6 279. Michael had his appendix out at 16, which would have been the first time he ever

7 took pain killers. Michael’s parents knew that he occasionally smoked pot with friends, but to the

8 best of their knowledge, he was not taking other drugs. He was focused on school and doing well.

9 280. On February 24, 2020, Michael purchased what he believed to be two Percocet

10 from a Snapchat Drug Dealer, but one of which turned out to be laced with lethal doses of Fentanyl

11 instead. This dealer was someone Michael did not know in real life and would never have met but

12 for the connections Snapchat fostered, encouraged, and enabled.

13 281. The Snapchat Drug Dealer delivered these fatal doses of fentanyl to Michael’s

14 apartment, and Michael and his roommate did not know and had no reason to know that Snapchat

15 Drug Dealers were using the Snapchat product to sell lethal, counterfeit pills.

16 282. Michael purchased two pills from this Snapchat Drug Dealer, took one, and his

17 roommate took the other. Shortly thereafter, Michael was gone.

18 283. It was not until the coroner informed Michael’s parents of the toxicology report that

19 anyone understood how he had died. On information and belief, Michael and his roommate had

20 never heard of fentanyl or that or that Snapchat Drug Dealers were selling lethal, counterfeit pills.

21 They trusted the Snapchat product, which they and their friends had been using for years.

22 284. The police were able to find, surveil, and arrest the Snapchat Drug Dealer, who was

23 sentenced to one year for Michael’s death – but ultimately served only three months.

24 285. Michael died of Fentanyl poisoning on February 24, 2020. Snapchat’s defective

25 design and Snap’s failure to warn were substantial factors in causing Michael Leonardi’s death.

26 286. In August of 2021, Ramona wrote to Snapchat founder and CEO, Evan Spiegel,

27 informing him that her son died after taking a fake pill from a drug dealer on Snapchat. Evan

28 Spiegel did not respond, but instead, she received what appeared to be a form letter of sorts from

COMPLAINT 68
 1 Jennifer Stout, received August 31, 2021, touting all of the changes Snap claimed to be making to

2 make its product safer and raise awareness of the fentanyl crisis. In the letter, Snap admitted that

3 “… there is an urgent health crisis afflicting our youth, many of whom have no idea that pills can

4 be laced with lethal levels of fentanyl that can kill.” Snap also claimed that “[w]e are doing

5 everything we can to reach as many people as possible with this message” though, in fact, Snap

6 still never provided adequate (or any) warnings to consumers or users that Snapchat Drug Dealers

7 were selling counterfeit, deadly pills. Countless more children have died as a result.

8 287. Ramona has been in contact with and/or met several other families who have lost

9 their children to fentanyl poisoning. All of those involving a drug dealer connected to the child

10 by social media involve the Snapchat social media product.

11 288. Michael’s family members have suffered severe emotional distress from the loss,

12 and the traumatic and invasive nature of his death.

13 E. Snap Proximately Caused the Fentanyl Death of Dylan Moore

14
15
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18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28 (January 3, 2003 – May 15, 2022)

COMPLAINT 69
 1 289. Dylan Moore was born on January 3, 2003, and lived in Coatesville, Pennsylvania.

2 290. Dylan was a kind and easy-going child. He loved soccer, excelled in school, and

3 was a self-starter to the point that he never even needed an alarm clock for grade school – he would

4 wake himself on time and get ready, then give his mother a kiss as she dropped him off at school.

5 291. Dylan got his first cell phone around the age of 13 years old. He was heading into

6 middle school and needed a way to keep in touch with his parents, Plaintiffs Sarah and Kyle

7 Wilkinson. Sarah and Kyle cannot be certain when their son began using Snapchat but believe

8 that it was sometime within the first one to two years after getting a cell phone.

9 292. Dylan opened a Snapchat account and began using Snapchat without his parents’

10 knowledge or consent. Snap claims to require parental consent for all users under 18 but distributed

11 its product to Dylan regardless, and despite the fact that he was a minor and did not have consent.

12 Snapchat also purports to prohibit users having more than one personal account, and collects

13 Device ID and other user and device-specific data for every user; and yet, Snap provided Dylan

14 with at least two personal Snapchat accounts.

15 293. At the time, Sarah and Kyle did not know and had no way of discovering the defects

16 and dangers of the Snapchat product. They believed that Snapchat was a kids’ app, designed for

17 and marketed to kids, and used by kids to take and send silly photos to friends. That is how Snap

18 advertised and portrayed its product, and Plaintiffs had no reason to think otherwise. They did not

19 know about Snap’s extended use designs, its public profile settings, location finding tools,

20 disappearing Stories posts (or use of those by drug dealers to sell to kids), or any of Snap’s other

21 defective and/or inherently dangerous product features, and would have taken steps to prohibit

22 Snapchat from their household when Dylan was young had they known.

23 294. Dylan’s use of Snapchat resulted in a severe and steady decline in his mental health.

24 295. Prompted by the addictive design of Snap’s product, and the constant notifications

25 Snap pushed to Dylan 24 hours a day, Dylan developed a compulsion to engage with Snapchat at

26 all hours and began suffering from severe sleep deprivation as a result. Prior to his Snapchat use,

27 Dylan had no history of sleep issues, anxiety, depression, or any other mental health concern.

28 Almost immediately after his Snapchat use began, all of that changed.

COMPLAINT 70
 1 296. Dylan’s parents sought medical help, including treatment and counseling, but did

2 not know – no one but Snap knew – the source of the harms, such that Dylan ultimately continued

3 suffering from these Snapchat-caused harms until the time of his death.

4 297. Dylan felt like he needed to access to the Snapchat product on a near-constant basis,

5 and Snap’s design and distribution decisions made it impossible for his parents to prevent him

6 from using Snapchat even after they began to realize – years later – that Snapchat was being

7 operated like a black-market retail outlet. The more Dylan struggled the more Sarah began

8 checking his phone to find out what was wrong. She checked every aspect of his phone, however,

9 because of Snap’s design, it was the one app on his phone that prevented her from knowing what

10 was happening to her child on that app. Snap’s design deliberately and materially interfered with

11 her parental rights and her ability to monitor and protect her son.

12 298. Sarah had also eventually opened her own Snapchat, in the hopes of being able to

13 figure out what the product was and keep tabs on her son. That also was unsuccessful. The

14 Snapchat product was difficult for her to understand, and Snap provided no instructions or other

15 information as to how to work the product. Snap also did not provide warnings about the dangers

16 of its product – including, but not limited to, the fact that Snap was connecting drug dealers to

17 children and making all manner of drug available to children through its unique product features.

18 Sarah works in a hospital but had never idea and had no reason to suspect that children were dying

19 as the result of counterfeit pills purchased through the Snapchat social media product.

20 299. Snap knew that this was a crisis, affecting thousands of its young users – and did

21 everything in its power to conceal the truth.

22 300. Snap markets, designs, and distributes its products—including through the use of

23 disappearing or time-sensitive messaging features and secret, self-destructing data vaults, and

24 failure to verify age and parental consent—to frustrate parents like Sarah and Kyle from exercising

25 their rights and duties to monitor and limit their children’s use of those products.

26 301. Snap actively concealed the defects and dangers of its product and failed to provide

27 warnings, making it impossible for Sarah and Kyle to protect their child.

28 302. As proximate result of Snap’s products and features, i.e. push notifications, user

COMPLAINT 71
 1 recommendations, interface and operational extended use designs, rewards and gamification

2 features, etc. – Dylan, then a minor, began suffering from severe mental health harms, including,

3 but not limited to, social media compulsion, severe sleep deprivation, and severe anxiety and

4 depression. But also, Snapchat began affirmatively exposing and connected Dylan to drug

5 advertising and Snapchat Drug Dealers. Shortly after Snap began providing its product to Dylan,

6 and after the mental health harms it was causing him began to surface, Dylan started buying

7 marijuana from Snapchat Drug Dealers.

8 303. What Plaintiffs did not know, and are only just starting to learn, is that Snap began

9 connecting drug dealers to Dylan via its public profile settings, user recommendation algorithm,

10 and mapping and location features, as it does to millions of underage Snapchat users, soon after

11 his Snapchat use began. On information and belief, he received multiple Quick Add requests from

12 other Snapchat users he did not know in real life and, because of Snap’s gamification and other

13 features that encourage kids to accept those requests, he accepted them. Among the strangers to

14 whom Snap connected Dylan were nearby Snapchat Drug Dealers – persons Dylan did not know

15 in real life and would not have met but for Snap’s product decision, programming, distribution,

16 and operational decisions.

17 304. Snapchat essentially designed and programmed its user connection systems to

18 increase engagement at any costs which, in the case of minor users, included affirmatively

19 identifying and directing predators and drug dealers to those minor users.

20 305. Snapchat connected Dylan to Snapchat Drug Dealers he did not know, and with

21 whom he would not have connected but for Snapchat and its various product features and tools –

22 including tools dealers use to find new customers, particularly, children, teens, and young adults,

23 such as public profiles, drug menu delivery via the Stories product, direct messaging, the Quick

24 Add user connection product, Snap location feature, and others.

25 306. The following is just one example of the types of drug advertising Snap knew or

26 should have known about and pushed to Dylan’s Stories and other Snapchat feed features,

27
28

COMPLAINT 72
 1
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307. Dylan trusted the Snapchat product, which he had been using for years. Snapchat
14
was familiar and seemed safe to him, which trust Snap cultivates through its marketing to and
15
targeting of minors, building brand loyalty and familiarity, and populating its product with various
16
forms of games, cartoons, silly filters, and other features with which young people associate. Dylan
17
did not believe that Snapchat was dangerous, nor did Snapchat warn him of its dangers.
18
308. On May 13, 2022, Dylan spent the day at the hospital, where his mom worked.
19
309. On May 14, 2022, he purchased from a Snapchat Drug Dealer – someone he did
20
not know in real life and would never have met but for Snap affirmatively connecting them – a
21
pill, which he believed to be a Percocet. On information and belief, he was not the only one to
22
whom Snap connected this dealer and he was not the only one sold these deadly counterfeit pills.
23
310. Sarah and Kyle knew that Dylan had been turning to marijuana to self-medicate,
24
which marijuana he was able to obtain only because of Snapchat. What they did not know was
25
that children were dying – and had been dying for years – because of counterfeit pills being sold
26
through the Snapchat product. This was a risk no one but Snapchat and the dealers themselves
27
knew about, and Snapchat had long since opted to not provide warnings to parents or its young
28

COMPLAINT 73
 1 users about this specific, known, and deadly Snapchat crisis.

2 311. On the evening of May 13, 2022, Sarah tried to talk to her son about the issues he

3 was having. He told her that he had taken a prescription medication, and to not start with him –

4 but that they could talk later. Sarah did not push the issue because she knew that he was home,

5 and he was safe. She believed she would have time to talk with him the next day, after she got

6 home from work, so she kissed her son and went to bed. She believed that Dylan was in the safest

7 place he could be.

8 312. The next morning, on May 14, 2022, Sarah got up and began getting ready to leave

9 for work around 6:30 a.m. She never left the house without giving her son a hug and kiss goodbye,

10 so went to his room only to find him in his bed and in a state that made clear that he was gone.

11 Dylan was laying on his stomach and his mother went to turn him. He was rigid, freezing cold,

12 and half of his face was blue and purple. Sarah screamed, and Kyle came running to the room then

13 called 9-1-1. She told the paramedics over and over that there was nothing they could do to try to

14 resuscitate him. They had to simply wait and watch as their son was taken.

15 313. Dylan had purchased what he believed to be a prescription drug, Percocet, which

16 turned out to contain with enough fentanyl to kill several grown men. Dylan took only half a pill

17 and was gone.

18 314. When the police arrived, they took possession of all of Dylan’s electronics. They

19 were immediately able to determine that Dylan purchased the counterfeit pill via Snapchat, and

20 told his parents that, because of this, there was likely very little they could do in terms of catching

21 the dealer. They said that Snapchat was saying it was to reduce the ability of dealers to sell drugs

22 on Snapchat, but “it just hasn’t happened yet.” They also said that Snap’s product design – the

23 fact that its photos and messages disappear – would be an obstacle to stopping this dealer.

24 315. On information and belief, after Dylan’s death the Snapchat Drug Dealer Snapchat

25 aided and abetted in Dylan’s murder was aware of his death and there were public facing posts

26 discussing and/or alluding to it. Nonetheless, Snapchat allowed him to continue selling.

27 316. Dylan died of Fentanyl poisoning sometime between May 14 and May 15, 2022.

28 This was years after Snap knew that its product was enabling and assisting dealers in the murder

COMPLAINT 74
 1 of young users, and years after Snap made the decision to not make meaningful changes or provide

2 warnings to parents and users of the harms that were occurring because of the Snapchat product.

3 Snapchat’s defective design and Snap’s failure to warn were substantial factors in causing Dylan

4 Moore’s death.

5 317. Dylan’s family members have suffered severe emotional distress from the loss, and

6 the traumatic and invasive nature of his/her death.

7
F. Snap Proximately Caused the Fentanyl Death of Moses “Malik” Majekodunmi
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27 (January 3, 2003 – December 19, 2022)
28

COMPLAINT 75
 1 318. Moses Malik “Malik” Majekodunmi was born on January 3, 2003, and lived in

2 Broomfield, Colorado.

3 319. Malik was athletic and outgoing. He loved video games, and excelled at football,

4 to the point where he received several offers from top colleges and a full ride scholarship. He

5 dreamed of being an engineer.

6 320. Malik did not get his first cell phone until he was 16 years old. He was not

7 particularly interested in social media, and did not have access, to best of his parents’ knowledge,

8 until that time. His parents, Plaintiffs Olusesi Majekodunmi and Rose Smoak cannot be certain

9 when Malik began using the Snapchat product, but believe it was shortly after he got his phone.

10 321. Malik opened a Snapchat account without his parents’ knowledge or consent. Snap

11 claims to require parental consent for all users under 18 but distributed its product to Malik

12 regardless, and despite the fact that he was a minor and did not have parental consent.

13 322. Olusesi and Rose believed that Snapchat was a kids’ app, designed for and

14 marketed to kids, and used by kids to take and send goofy photos to their friends. They did not

15 know about Snap’s extended use designs, that Snapchat was connecting drug dealers to children,

16 or any of Snap’s other defective and/or inherently dangerous product features. Nor did Snap

17 advertise or disclose these features or include any warnings on the product itself. Snap advertised

18 its product as just a camera app, which allowed kids to create and exchange silly, filtered photos

19 with other kids they knew in real life, not strangers.

20 323. Malik’s use of Snapchat resulted in a severe and almost immediate decline in his

21 mental health.

22 324. Prompted by the addictive design of Snap’s product, and the constant notifications

23 Snap pushed to Malik 24 hours a day, Malik developed a compulsion to engage with Snapchat at

24 all hours and had trouble sleeping at night as a result. He was tired all the time and his personality

25 changed, as he began suffering from anxiety and depression for the first time in his life. Malik

26 ultimately struggled with these Snapchat-caused harms until the time of his death.

27 325. Snap markets, designs, and distributes its products—including through the use of

28 disappearing or time-sensitive messaging features and secret, self-destructing data vaults, and

COMPLAINT 76
 1 failure to verify age and parental consent—to frustrate parents like Olusesi and Rose from

2 exercising their rights and duties to monitor and limit their children’s use of those products.

3 326. Malik’s use of Snapchat was like an addiction, and his mother’s attempts to restrict

4 or limit his access caused Malik to become angry and belligerent. He would get mad and start

5 slamming doors, or even go so far as to take things belonging to Rose, like her phone, or the keys

6 to her car. He was not an angry person, but his dependency on the Snapchat product changed him

7 to the point where he felt like he could not live without it.

8 327. Moreover, Snap’s disappearing message feature directly interfered in Olusesi and

9 Rose’s ability to protect their child. As Malik’s mental health deteriorated further, Rose would

10 take his phone to search through it, in the hopes of finding out what was happening to her son. On

11 these occasions he told her to go ahead. He was confident she wouldn’t find anything because, as

12 he eventually told her, he only communicates through Snapchat.

13 328. As proximate result of Snap’s products and features, i.e. push notifications, user

14 recommendations, interface and operational extended use designs, rewards and gamification

15 features, etc. – Malik, then a minor, began suffering from severe mental health harms, including,

16 but not limited to, social media compulsion, sleep deprivation, anxiety, and depression. These are

17 harms Snap knows or should know its product is causing in a significant number of minor users.

18 329. Snap also then began connecting drug dealers to Malik via its public profile

19 settings, user connection technologies, and mapping and location features, as it does to millions of

20 underage Snapchat users. It exposed him to excessive amounts of drug related advertising and

21 fostered other harmful and dangerous connections, all as a matter of its own programming

22 decisions. On information and belief, Malik received multiple Quick Add requests from other

23 Snapchat users he did not know in real life and, because of Snap’s gamification and other features

24 that encourage kids to accept those requests, he accepted them. Among the strangers to whom

25 Snap connected Malik were nearby Snapchat dealers – persons he did not know in real life and

26 would not have met but for Snap’s product decision, programming, distribution, and operational

27 decisions.

28 330. When Malik opened his first Snapchat account, he did not know or have reason to

COMPLAINT 77
 1 think that Snapchat was dangerous, nor did Snapchat warn him or his parents of its dangers. In

2 fact, even though Rose had her own Snapchat account, she had never heard of fentanyl and had no

3 idea that there were drug dealers on Snapchat killing children with counterfeit prescription pills.

4 331. On December 18, 2022, Malik had a job interview for a position at an Amazon

5 distribution center, so Rose called him a Lyft. He said that dad would pick him up after the

6 interview. She sent him $15 for food, and he headed to Olusesi’s house after the interview.

7 332. Rose spoke with her son at 2 pm the following day, on December 19, 2022, and

8 Malik said he got the job. He had slept in late but was up and getting ready for his new job. He

9 was excited and Rose was excited for him.

10 333. At the same time, 2:00 pm on December 19, Olusesi had an interview via Zoom.

11 When the interview was over, he went to look for his son but couldn’t find him, so called Malik’s

12 phone. He heard the phone ringing in the bathroom so went to check on Malik and found him

13 slumped over in the bathroom. Malik wasn’t breathing, so Olusesi called 9-1-1, then he called

14 Rose and told her to get to the house immediately. By the time she arrived, the paramedics had

15 already stopped CPR on her son. They had tried Narcan on him three times, without success.

16 334. A few days before his death, Malik had met with one of the Snapchat Drug Dealers

17 to whom Snapchat connected him and purchased what he believed to be Percocet. The pills turned

18 out to be laced with deadly amounts of fentanyl. On information and belief, Malik was not the

19 first or only child to whom Snapchat connected this Snapchat Drug Dealer, and it is more likely

20 than not that he is not the only child who died because of those Snapchat caused connections.

21 335. Rose asked the police to issue a record request to Snapchat in connection with her

22 son’s homicide. They said that it’s pointless, because of the design of the Snapchat product. One

23 member of law enforcement told her that he has worked with Snapchat on a lot of cases involving

24 homicides, sexual assaults, and kidnappings, and that Snapchat does not retain the data law

25 enforcement needs. On information and belief, certain of Snap’s competitors retain and/or will

26 agree to retain at least some of this critical data; making Snapchat itself a primary obstacle to law

27 enforcement when it comes to the fentanyl poisoning homicides of American children.

28 336. Snapchat also does not implement (or reasonably implement) existing and available

COMPLAINT 78
 1 technologies that would block access to its product by violating and unauthorized users. For

2 example, Rose posted photos and/or videos with a gun and other platforms took those down

3 immediately. Not Snapchat. Snapchat is known for not utilizing or reasonably utilizing such

4 technologies, allowing users – specifically, Snapchat Drug Dealers – to post whatever they want

5 with impunity. Snap’s business decision to not implement and/or utilize reasonable technologies

6 for enforcement of its own terms has proven deadly to many of its youngest users.

7 337. On January 9, 2023, Rose wrote to Snapchat and asked them to retain all data for

8 Malik’s account. She said that her request involved “fentanyl deaths in the state of Colorado.”

9 Snap responded only that it would preserve “available account information” for 90 days,

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14
338. Malik died of Fentanyl poisoning on December 19, 2022 – just two months before
15
the filing of this lawsuit, and several years after Snap knew or should have known the harms that
16
its product was causing – these exact harms which Snap knew, with reasonable certainty, was and
17
would continue to cause the death of users just like Malik.
18
339. Snapchat’s defective design and Snap’s failure to warn were substantial factors in
19
causing Malik Majekodunmi’s death.
20
340. Malik’s family members have suffered severe emotional distress from the loss, and
21
the traumatic and invasive nature of his death.
22
23
24
25
26
27
28

COMPLAINT 79
 1 G. Snap Proximately Caused the Fentanyl Death of Kevin Andrew Hutchings

2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20 (December 13, 2001 – April 25, 2022)
21 341. Kevin “Andrew” Hutchings was born on December 13, 2021, and lived in
22 Cartersville, Georgia.
23 342. Andrew was a sweet, funny, and incredibly smart child. He excelled at school,
24 graduated with honors, and was debating between a major in biology or psychology with plans of
25 becoming an epidemiologist. Andrew loved gaming, and on days he did not have school or work
26 would stay up until all hours of the morning talking and playing online with his friends.
27 343. Andrew got his first cell phone around his freshman year of high school, which is
28 when he downloaded and began using the Snapchat social media product.

COMPLAINT 80
 1 344. Andrew did not ask his parents for permission, and they did not know about

2 Snapchat until after Andrew began using it. Even then, however, they had no reason think that it

3 was a dangerous or defective product. On the contrary, Snap advertised its product as a silly photo

4 filter app, made for kids and used by kids to communicate with their friends. Plaintiffs Jackie and

5 Terry Hutchings did not have Snapchat accounts at that time and had no reason to think that

6 Snapchat was anything other than what it purported and appeared to be.

7 345. What Andrew’s parents did not know and had no way of discovering because of

8 Snap’s design, marketing, and distribution of its product, was that the Snapchat app was exposing

9 Andrew to drug advertising and other harmful and unsolicited content and began connecting and

10 exposing him to drug dealers via its designs, as it does to millions of underage Snapchat users.

11 346. While still a minor, Andrew received multiple Quick Add requests from other

12 Snapchat users he did not know in real life and, because of Snap’s gamification and other features

13 that encourage kids to accept those requests, he accepted them. He also connected with local

14 Snapchat Drug Dealers, dealers who, on information and belief, used Snapchat exclusively to sell

15 to kids both because of Snap’s provision of new customers through its recommendation and other

16 technologies, and because of Snap’s promises that they could not get caught. These were persons

17 that would not have been selling drugs to teens, but for their access to the Snapchat product.

18 347. Andrew, like millions of American teens, learned that he could purchase marijuana

19 through and because of the Snapchat product and faced little to no risk of getting caught, because

20 of how Snap designs and operates its product. Throughout high school, Snapchat provided

21 Andrew with access to marijuana, which he tried on occasion.

22 348. Snap actively concealed the defects and dangers of its product and failed to provide

23 warnings, making it impossible for Jackie and Terry to protect their child.

24 349. In fact, a few years after Andrew began using the Snapchat product, Terry decided

25 to open her own Snapchat account to see what it was all about. She would occasionally receive

26 messages from strangers trying to add her to their friend’s list, which she did not accept, but she

27 did not receive or ever see drug advertisements or anything else to suggest that Snapchat was a

28 defective or dangerous product, or that it posed any risk to her son.

COMPLAINT 81
 1 350. Snap markets, designs, and distributes its products—including through the use of

2 disappearing or time-sensitive messaging features and secret, self-destructing data vaults, and

3 failure to verify age and parental consent—to frustrate parents like Jackie and Terry from

4 exercising their rights and duties to monitor and limit their children’s use of those products.

5 351. As proximate result of Snap’s products and features, i.e. push notifications, user

6 recommendations, interface and operational extended use designs, rewards and gamification

7 features, etc. – Andrew, then a minor, became dependent on the Snapchat product and used

8 Snapchat every, single day. It his primary method of communication with his friends. As Snap

9 intended, Andrew trusted the Snapchat product. Snapchat was familiar and seemed safe to him,

10 which trust Snap cultivates through its marketing to and targeting of minors, building brand loyalty

11 and familiarity, and populating its product with various forms of games, cartoons, silly filters, and

12 other features with which young people associate. Andrew did not believe that Snapchat was

13 dangerous, nor did Snapchat warn him of its dangers.

14 352. On Sunday, April 24, 2022, Andrew went out to dinner with his parents at Cracker

15 Barrel, then went grocery shopping, and came home. Andrew helped unload the groceries, told

16 his dad he was going to the gym, and returned home about an hour later. Jackie asked him if the

17 gym was crowded and Andrew responded, “kind of.” Jackie believed his son was going to his

18 room to play video games with friends, and that he was in the safest place in the world. But instead,

19 this was the last conversation Jackie and Andrew would ever have.

20 353. Jackie arrived home from work the morning of Monday, April 25, 2022. He

21 watched some TV, went to the gym, ran errands, and was home by 1:00 p.m. At 4:45 p.m., as he

22 was getting ready to leave for work, he stopped by Andrew’s room to say “Bye, see you in the

23 morning” as he did every evening when he left for work; only this time, when he said it, Andrew

24 did not respond. Jackie walked over to his son, noticed that he was an odd color and when he

25 reached out, Andrew was cold and stiff, which is when Jackie went to pieces.

26 354. Jackie called 9-1-1 but the paramedics could not help as Andrew had been gone for

27 hours. According, to Andrew’s gamer friends in Utah, they lost contact with him around 3 a.m.

28 EST on the morning of April 25, which is likely when Andrew stopped breathing.

COMPLAINT 82
 1 355. Police and paramedics did not yet know how Andrew died, had no reason to suspect

2 fentanyl poisoning, and would likely never have known about the Snapchat facilitated homicide

3 but for the fact that a friend of Andrew’s came to the house the following day. This friend told his

4 parents to check Andrew’s phone and, specifically, his Snapchat account.

5 356. Jackie and Terry checked Andrew’s Snapchat, and learned that Andrew had

6 purchased what he believed to be an Oxycodone from a local Snapchat Drug Dealer. They also

7 re-checked his room and found a bag with two pills, which police later confirmed to be the

8 “Oxycodone” Andrew purchased via the Snapchat app. Specifically, Andrew had purchased three

9 pills, took one, and that one pill contained enough Fentanyl and tranquilizer to kill him.

10 357. Jackie and Terry called the police immediately, who came to the home and took

11 Andrew’s phone and the evidence to investigate. Only information and belief, this Snapchat Drug

12 Dealer dealt to children exclusively on Snapchat for many reasons, including because he believed

13 that he could not get caught. In fact, after learning about Andrew’s death, he proceeded to continue

14 selling the fatal, counterfeit prescription pills on Snapchat, which is how police were able to set up

15 a sting. As the Snapchat Drug Dealer sold his remaining 19 “Oxycodone” pills to an undercover

16 officer, he warned the officer to be careful with these because “I had a guy die on me this week.”

17 358. The Snapchat Drug Dealer, and thousands like him, chose to sell counterfeit

18 prescription narcotics – drugs he knew to be lethal and deadly, but that the children to whom he

19 sold did not know to be lethal and deadly – through the Snapchat social media product. On

20 information and belief, he did not sell those via TikTok or Instagram or any other social media app

21 popular among teens because Snap is the only social media company that promised to erase all

22 evidence of his crime – not involuntary homicide, but murder. On information and belief, this

23 Snapchat Drug Dealer would not have been selling pills he knew to be lethal but for Snap’s design

24 and product offerings, because the risk of doing so on other, similar products is simply too high.

25 359. This was the first, last, and only time Andrew attempted to purchase a prescription

26 narcotic. He purchased what he believed to be Oxycodone, but that turned out to be laced with

27 lethal doses of Fentanyl and tranquilizer instead.

28 360. Andrew died on April 25, 2022, and Snapchat’s defective design and Snap’s failure

COMPLAINT 83
 1 to warn were substantial factors in causing Kevin Andrew Hutchings’ death.

2 361. Andrew’s family members have suffered severe emotional distress from the loss,

3 and the traumatic and invasive nature of his death.

4
H. Snap Proximately Caused the Fentanyl Death of Jaylen Penix
5
6
7
8
9
10
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13
14
15
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17
18
19
20
21
22
23 (March 27, 1999 – July 26, 2020)
24 362. Jaylen Penix was born on March 27, 1999, and lived in Tacoma, Washington.
25 363. Jaylen was kind, artistic, soulful, and enjoyed spending as much time as possible
26 outdoors. He loved everyone and was the kid who made friends with and checked in on other kids
27 who were lonely or sad. He was a talented musician and dreamed of someday creating and sharing
28 his music for the world to enjoy. He created music under the name Black Santana, created an

COMPLAINT 84
 1 entire album, and posted it for the world to enjoy on Sound Cloud. The following is a link to just

2 one of his songs, titled “I know that you love me ft. Vonte,”

3 https://soundcloud.com/jaylen-penix/i-know-that-you-love-me-ft-vonte

4 364. Jaylen did not get his first smart phone until around 8th or 9th grade. He was never

5 interested in spending time on electronic devices, but all of that changed once he began using

6 social media. His mother, Plaintiff Jasmine Robinson, cannot be certain as to when he opened his

7 first Snapchat account, but believes it was sometime around Jaylen’s freshman year of high school.

8 365. Snap claims to require parental consent for all users under 18 but distributed its

9 product to Jaylen regardless, and despite the fact that he was a minor and did not have consent.

10 366. Nor did Jasmine know anything about social media products in general, and the

11 Snapchat product specifically. She had opened a Facebook account a few years prior to Jaylen

12 getting his first smart phone, because her sister-in-law said she should – but even then, she only

13 checked it once every few months, was not active on it, and did not understand much about the

14 product itself or any of its special features. The only thing Jasmine was vaguely aware of when it

15 came to Snapchat was that kids could use it to send photos to each other, and it had silly filters. It

16 appeared to be – and Snapchat advertised it as – a camera product made and safe for kids.

17 367. What Jasmine did not know – in fact, no one knew but Snap until very recently –

18 was that Snap’s public representations were not the truth. The Snapchat product was not designed

19 with the safety of minor users in mind, on the contrary, Snap operated and distributed its product

20 at all times relevant in a manner intended to increase its own engagement at expense of user safety.

21 Jasmine did not know and could not have discovered the harms being caused by Snap’s extended

22 use designs (its Streaks, Scores, or other hidden reward features that create harmful dependencies

23 in kids), or its public profile settings, location finding tools, disappearing Stories posts (or use of

24 those by drug dealers to sell to kids), or any of Snap’s other defective and/or inherently dangerous

25 product features. She also did not know that strangers could and were using Snapchat to connect

26 with her child, which types of design, distribution, and operational decisions have only just started

27 coming to light after the Facebook whistleblower disclosed thousands of internal records detailing

28

COMPLAINT 85
 1 how social media companies like Meta Platforms Inc. and, as relevant here, Snap Inc., market,

2 design, distribute, and operate their products in late 2021 and 2022.

3 368. Jaylen’s use of Snapchat resulted in a steady decline in his mental health.

4 369. Prompted by the addictive design of Snap’s product, and the constant notifications

5 Snap pushed to Jaylen 24 hours a day, Jaylen developed a compulsion to engage with Snapchat at

6 all hours and had trouble sleeping at night as a result. Prior to using Snapchat, Jaylen loved being

7 outside and spending times with friends. He as in drama club, got along with other kids and his

8 teachers, and enjoyed the types of things kids are supposed to enjoy – hanging out and having fun.

9 But the Snapchat social media product changed all of that, and it changed it quickly. Jaylen

10 became consumed with social media, began having trouble sleeping, was anxious, and became

11 more confrontational with those around him. These are harms that the Snapchat product is causing

12 a substantial number of its teen users, as Snapchat knows or should know.

13 370. Snap markets, designs, and distributes its products—including through the use of

14 disappearing or time-sensitive messaging features and secret, self-destructing data vaults, and

15 failure to verify age and parental consent—to frustrate parents like Jasmine from exercising their

16 rights and duties to protect their children.

17 371. As proximate result of Snap’s products and features, i.e. push notifications, user

18 recommendations, interface and operational extended use designs, rewards and gamification

19 features, etc. – Jaylen, then a minor, began suffering from severe mental health harms, including,

20 but not limited to, social media compulsion, sleep deprivation, anxiety, and depression.

21 372. Snap actively concealed the defects and dangers of its product and failed to provide

22 warnings, making it impossible for Jasmine to protect her child, and resulting in Jaylen’s death.

23 373. Jasmine never consented to her child’s use of a dangerous social media product,

24 which started well before he turned 18.

25 374. In March of 2016, Jaylen suffered a traumatic brain injury. He was in a

26 skateboarding accident that resulted in five fractures to his skull. The injuries were painful, and

27 Jaylen began suffering from severe headaches, as well as long-term effects, such as loss of hearing

28 in his left ear and resulting balance issues.

COMPLAINT 86
 1 375. The first time Jaylen ever tried Percocet was when he was in the hospital. When

2 Jaylen was 17, he required a prescription for pain killers, but the medical staff did everything they

3 could to wean him off those. Unfortunately for Jaylen, Snap collects thousands of data points on

4 each user so that it can better target each user to increase engagement, and Jaylen was no exception.

5 376. After his injuries, Snap began targeted Jaylen with its connection and content

6 technologies. It began connecting him to drug dealers via its public profile settings, user

7 recommendation algorithm, and mapping and location features, as it does to millions of underage

8 Snapchat users. On information and belief, Jaylen received drug advertising and multiple Quick

9 Add requests from other Snapchat users he did not know in real life. Jaylen was vulnerable and in

10 pain, and he trusted Snapchat. He had no way to appreciate the dangers of the Snapchat social

11 media product, and when Snap began connecting him to nearby Snapchat Drug Dealers – persons

12 he did not know in real life and would not have met but for Snap’s product decision, programming,

13 distribution, and operational decisions – Jaylen accepted those connections.

14 377. Snapchat designed and programmed its user connection systems to increase

15 engagement at any costs which, in the case of minor users, included affirmatively identifying and

16 directing predators and drug dealers to those minor users. In Jaylen’s case, Snap had enough

17 information in its possession to know about his injury and his vulnerabilities; as such and on

18 information and belief, Snap’s proprietary technologies began utilizing those data points in a way

19 that all but guaranteed harm to Jaylen, a child who trusted the Snapchat product.

20 378. Snapchat connected Jaylen to Snapchat Drug Dealers he did not know, and with

21 whom he would not have connected but for Snapchat and its various product features and tools –

22 including tools dealers use to find new customers, particularly, children, teens, and young adults,

23 such as public profiles, drug menu delivery via the Stories product, direct messaging, the Quick

24 Add user connection product, Snap location feature, and others.

25 379. Jaylen trusted the Snapchat product, which he had been using for years. Snapchat

26 was familiar and seemed safe to him, which trust Snap cultivates through its marketing to and

27 targeting of minors, building brand loyalty and familiarity, and populating its product with various

28 forms of games, cartoons, silly filters, and other features with which young people associate.

COMPLAINT 87
 1 Jaylen and his friends did not believe that Snapchat was dangerous, nor did Snapchat warn them

2 of its dangers.

3 380. After high school, Jaylen decided to focus on his music and was working for

4 Milgard in Tacoma, Washington. He supplied windows to hospitals and health care facilities,

5 lifting and installing items himself that it may otherwise have taken two people to lift and install.

6 Jaylen was marked as an essential work and was proud of that status and of his ability to continue

7 contributing at all times during the pandemic.

8 381. Then, on July 26, 2020, Jaylen and a friend were connected to and purchased what

9 they believed to be prescription narcotics from a Snapchat Drug Dealer. Many Snapchat Drug

10 Dealers deliver, and this one delivered two “Percocet” to their front door. Jaylen was living with

11 a roommate at the time, and he and his friend did not have a vehicle. They did not know this

12 Snapchat Drug Dealer and in real life and, but for Snap’s design and distribution decisions, would

13 have had no way to obtain Percocet or any other narcotic at that time. They also did not know or

14 understand that Snapchat users were dying from counterfeit drugs laced with fentanyl and trusted

15 the Snapchat product – which they had been using for years and which the teens and young adults

16 across the country understand to be the primary retail location for prescription medications.

17 382. Jaylen had purchased what he believed to be Percocet but that turned out to be laced

18 with lethal doses of Fentanyl instead. In fact, the pill was ultimately determined to be 100%

19 fentanyl, with enough fentanyl in it to kill several grown men.

20 383. The police told Jasmine that Jaylen got the pill from Snapchat but did not

21 investigate or pursue the dealer because of how Snapchat is designed. They would not even take

22 his devices as they said that there was not point. They explained that Snapchat works by allowing

23 kids to send each other pictures that disappear. They are sent and then they are gone, creating high

24 barriers for law enforcement to catch dealers.

25 384. Jaylen died of Fentanyl poisoning on July 26, 2020. Snapchat’s defective design

26 and Snap’s failure to warn were substantial factors in causing Jaylen Penix’s death.

27 385. On information and belief, Jaylen was not the only child to whom Snapchat

28 connected this Snapchat Drug Dealer, which dealer died himself in March of 2022. On information

COMPLAINT 88
 1 and belief, Snap allowed him to continue using its social media product to sell his goods until his

2 death, and both the dealer and Snap profited handsomely as a result.

3 386. In November of 2022, Jasmine attended a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)

4 Summit, and it was at this summit that she learned, for the first time, about just some of the unique

5 Snapchat features and designs that are enabling dealers to find children. Prior to that time, she

6 believed that Snapchat was a camera app made for kids, and that allowed children to send goofy

7 photos. Prior to that time, she also believed that companies like Snapchat were subject to

8 regulation and had no idea that they believed they could do whatever they wanted without recourse.

9 She did not know about Snap’s text capabilities, its extended use designs and gamification features,

10 location tools, targeted advertising tactics, Snap directed and recommended feed feature, or that

11 children were being exposed and affirmatively connected to strangers on the Snapchat product. To

12 this day, there still are multiple aspects of Snapchat’s design and distribution of which she has no

13 knowledge, and of which she could not obtain knowledge in the exercise of reasonable diligence

14 for the simple reason that Snap concealed these truths from the world for more than a decade.

15 387. Jasmine has been in contact with and/or met several other families who have lost

16 their children to fentanyl poisoning. All of those involving a drug dealer connected to the child

17 by social media involve the Snapchat social media product. She has never met or heard of a child

18 who was connected to a drug dealer on TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook, and died as a result.

19 388. Jaylen’s family members have suffered severe emotional distress from the loss, and

20 the traumatic and invasive nature of his death.

21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28

COMPLAINT 89
 1 I. Snap Proximately Caused the Fentanyl Death of Allie Higdon

2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
(January 28, 2000 – April 8, 2022)
19
389. Allie Higdon was born on January 28, 2000, and lived in Lake Charlies, Louisiana.
20
390. Allie was an incredible child. She loved dancing and playing instruments and
21
excelled at school.
22
391. Allie got her first cell phone when she was 12 years old. She was heading into
23
middle school, and her parents were divorced and wanted to have a way for her to reach them as
24
needed. Plaintiff James Powell cannot be certain when his child began using Snapchat but believes
25
that Allie opened her first Snapchat account soon after she got her first cell phone. She opened an
26
account and began using Snapchat without her parents’ knowledge or consent.
27
392. Snap claims to require parental consent for all users under 18 but distributed its
28

COMPLAINT 90
 1 product to Allie regardless, and despite the fact that she was a minor and did not have parental

2 consent. James knew nothing about the Snapchat product at the time. When he heard about

3 Snapchat, he believed that it was kids’ app, designed for and marketed to kids, and used by kids to

4 take and send goofy photos to their friends. He did not know about Snap’s extended use designs,

5 its public profile settings, location finding tools, disappearing Stories posts (or use of those by drug

6 dealers to sell to kids), or any of Snap’s other defective and/or inherently dangerous product

7 features. Snap did not advertise or disclose these features or provide any warnings.

8 393. It was not until around 2018 that James recalls seeing a news story about kids being

9 able to use Snapchat to obtain drugs. That was when he began looking into the product a bit

10 further, including opening his own Snapchat account to try to figure out what his daughter was

11 doing on what he had previously understood to be a harmless kids’ product. He opened a Snapchat,

12 posing as a teenage boy, and added Allie to his friends list. Snap’s gamification features

13 incentivize children to accept and interact with strangers, such that Allie added her father even

14 though she had no idea who he was; though she ultimately dropped him from her friend’s list when

15 she realized that it was him – which she figured out because he did not have enough “friends” or

16 a high enough Snap Score. It was difficult for James to figure out the Snapchat product, and he

17 learned little from his efforts, but remained concerned. Unfortunately for James, however, Allie

18 was already 18, she had been using Snapchat for years, and there was nothing he could do to

19 prevent such use.

20 394. Had James known about Snapchat when Allie was a child what he knows now, only

21 after the loss of his oldest child, he would never have allowed the Snapchat social media product

22 in his home. He now prohibits social media products in his home, and his wife monitors all devices.

23 395. Allie’s use of Snapchat resulted in a severe and steady decline in her mental health.

24 396. Prompted by the addictive design of Snap’s product, and the constant notifications

25 Snap pushed to Allie 24 hours a day, she developed a compulsion to engage with Snapchat at all

26 hours and had severe trouble sleeping at night as a result. She was always tied, began struggling

27 in school, and suffered severe anxiety, depression, even suicidal ideation, as a result. Her parents

28

COMPLAINT 91
 1 sought medical help and treatment, however, Allie ultimately struggled with these Snapchat-

2 caused harms until the time of her death.

3 397. Snap markets, designs, and distributes its products—including through the use of

4 disappearing or time-sensitive messaging features and secret, self-destructing data vaults, and

5 failure to verify age and parental consent—to frustrate parents like James from exercising their

6 rights and duties to monitor and limit their children’s use of those products.

7 398. Allie’s use of Snapchat was an addiction, and any attempt to restrict her access to

8 Snapchat prompted extreme reactions. She was dependent on the Snapchat product, and felt as

9 though she needed constant access, which interfered with every other aspect of her life.

10 399. Snap actively concealed the defects and dangers of its product and failed to provide

11 warnings, making it impossible for James to protect his child.

12 400. As proximate result of Snap’s products and features, i.e. push notifications, user

13 recommendations, interface and operational extended use designs, rewards and gamification

14 features, etc. – Allie, then a minor, began suffering from severe mental health harms, including,

15 but not limited to, social media compulsion, sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression, suicidal

16 ideation and, eventually, death. These are harms Snap also knows or should know its product is

17 causing in a significant number of minor users.

18 401. James never consented to Allie’s use of a dangerous social media product, which

19 started well before she turned 18. Had Snap been honest about the design and risk of its products,

20 had it simply provided reasonable disclosures and warnings, he would never have allowed it and

21 would have taken early and decisive steps to protect Allie from the Snapchat product.

22 402. When Allie was 16 years old, she began complaining of nerve issues in her hands.

23 Her hands would cramp and cause significant pain. Her parents took her for test after test, but no

24 one could figure out what was wrong. On information and belief, around this time Snap also began

25 connecting drug dealers to Allie via its public profile settings, user recommendation algorithm,

26 and mapping and location features, as it does to millions of underage Snapchat users. She received

27 multiple Quick Add requests from other Snapchat users she did not know in real life and, because

28 of Snap’s gamification and other features that encourage kids to accept those requests, she accepted

COMPLAINT 92
 1 them. Snap made strangers seem like friends, and Allie was abused and exploited as a result; she

2 also was connected to Snapchat Drug Dealers who lived nearby. While Allie lived in a small town,

3 these are drug dealers whose social circles she would never have crossed but for the Snapchat

4 caused harms and Snap’s product decision, programming, distribution, and operational decisions.

5 403. Snapchat essentially designed and programmed its user connection systems to

6 increase engagement at any costs which, in the case of minor users, included affirmatively

7 identifying and directing predators and drug dealers to those minor users.

8 404. On April 8, 2022, Allie and her father had a disagreement, so Allie grabbed some

9 clothes and had a friend pick her up. Allie had recently had a tooth extracted and was still in

10 considerable discomfort, in addition to the regular nerve pain in her hands.

11 405. On information and belief, Allie reached out to one of the Snapchat Drug Dealers

12 to whom the Snapchat product had connected her and asked her friend to drop her off at the dealer’s

13 house – which he did. Allie then purchased what she believed to be a Xanax, but that turned out to

14 be laced with lethal doses of Fentanyl instead. This was not the first time Snapchat had connected

15 Allie to a drug dealer who sold her counterfeit prescription pills, but it turned out to be the last.

16 406. As Allie struggled to breath, the Snapchat Drug Dealer began clearing his home of

17 drugs and paraphernalia. He waited more than eight hours to call for help and, by that time, it was

18 far too late. Allie was gone. As James arrived home that following evening, a police officer

19 stopped to tell him that his oldest child had died.

20 407. Allie died of Fentanyl poisoning on April 8, 2022. Snapchat’s defective design and

21 Snap’s failure to warn were substantial factors in causing Allie Higdon’s death.

22 408. Allie’s family members have suffered severe emotional distress from the loss, and

23 the traumatic and invasive nature of her death.

24
VI. PLAINTIFFS’ CLAIMS
25
COUNT I - STRICT PRODUCT LIABILITY (Design Defect)
26
409. Plaintiffs reallege each of the allegations in the preceding paragraphs as if fully set
27
forth herein.
28

COMPLAINT 93
 1 410. Snap designed and distributed a product that did not perform as safely as an

2 ordinary consumer would have expected it to perform when used or misused in an intended or

3 reasonably foreseeable way.

4 A. Affirmatively Connecting Minors to Predatory Adults

5 411. As designed Snapchat’s recommendation and other product features are not

6 reasonably safe because they affirmatively direct minor users to harmful and exploitative content

7 and predatory users (including drug dealers) while failing to deploy feasible safeguards to protect

8 vulnerable teens from such harmful exposures. It is feasible to design a social media product that

9 substantially distinguished between harmful and innocuous users and protect minor users from

10 being exposed to malign actors without altering, modifying, or deleting any third-party content

11 posted on Snap’s social media products. It is likewise feasible to design a social media product

12 that does not operate recommendation features at all and/or operates them in a manner that

13 prioritizes user safety over engagement and revenue to Snap. The cost of designing and/or

14 programming these products to incorporate these safeguards would be negligible while benefit

15 would be high in terms of reducing the quantum of mental and physical harm sustained by minor

16 users and their families.

17 412. As designed, Snapchat’s recommendations and other product features are not

18 reasonably safe because they affirmatively connect minor users to malign actors while failing to

19 deploy feasible safeguards to protect vulnerable users from such harmful exposures. It is feasible

20 to design a social media product that does not make harmful connection recommendations to minor

21 users, or any connection recommendations at all; it is feasible to design a social media product that

22 does not recommend harmful groups to minor users, or any group recommendations at all; and it

23 is feasible to restrict access to minor users by strangers and adult users via direct messaging, to

24 restrict and limit such access to users already on a minor user’s “friend” list, or to prevent such

25 access altogether. Snap knows that these product features cause a significant number of harms to

26 their minor users, such as sexual exploitation, bullying, encouragement of self-harm and suicide,

27 and death.

28 413. Minor users of social media and/or their parents do not reasonably expect that

COMPLAINT 94
 1 Snapchat’s design encourages and facilitates drug dealers to connect with minors and young adults,

2 to whom those dealers would otherwise never have access.

3 B. Disappearing Messages and Other Inherently Dangerous Product Features

4 414. Drug dealers frequently set up user accounts on Defendant Snap’s social media

5 product and utilize the Snapchat product more than any other social media product when selling

6 potentially deadly, counterfeit pills to minors and young adults because of Snap’s design,

7 advertising, and distribution of its disappearing message and posting products. They believe,

8 based on Snap’s marketing and assurances, that Snap will erase all evidence of their crimes.

9 415. Minor uses likewise use Snapchat more when engaged in riskier behavior because

10 they believe that Snap’s products and design will enable them to evade parental oversight; while

11 these same design features make it substantially harder, if not impossible, for parents to exercise

12 their parental rights with regard to their minor children.

13 416. The design of these products to make consumers believe that Snap is erasing all

14 evidence of interactions – including exploitation and drug dealing – is entirely unnecessary to

15 Snap’s operation and serves no communication, informational, or other purpose; and likewise,

16 Snap’s failure to retain information and data relating to its users, particularly minor users, serves

17 no functional purpose, but does render its product inherently dangerous to its minor users and

18 obstructionist with regard to parental rights.

19 417. As designed, Snap’s product also is not reasonably safe because of its “My Eyes”

20 only data vault product, as well as its public profile settings, Quick Add user recommendation

21 algorithm, and Snap Map and other location tools. With the exception of Snap’s public profile

22 settings and user recommendation algorithm, these products also are unique to Snap.

23 418. As designed, the above product features are not reasonably safe because they

24 encourage and facilitate the exploitation, abuse, and other harms to minors and young adults, while

25 failing to deploy feasible safeguards to protect vulnerable users from such harms. It is feasible to

26 design a social media product that does not encourage criminal activity and does not interfere with

27 or obstruct parents and law enforcement from protecting minor users, and without altering,

28 modifying, or deleting any third-party content posted on Snap’s social media product.

COMPLAINT 95
 1 419. Snap knows or has reason to know that its unique product features and/or product

2 feature combinations are responsible for the majority of social media related Fentanyl related

3 deaths among U.S. children aged 13 to 18 in the last few years. Yet Snap made the business

4 decision to not re-design its product to protect its own astronomical profits.

5 C. Failure to Verify Users’ Age and Identity

6 420. As designed, Defendant Snap’s Snapchat product is not reasonably safe because it

7 does not provide for adequate age and identity verification by utilizing available technologies or

8 otherwise requiring users to document and verify their age, identity, and, in the case of minor users,

9 parental consent.

10 421. Drug dealers frequently set up user accounts on Defendant Snap’s product with

11 false identities because they know that they will have access to millions of minors and young adults

12 and because Snap has assured them that its product will erase all evidence of their crimes.

13 422. Likewise, Snap knows or has reason to know when a blocked user has opened

14 multiple accounts and/or when a Snapchat Dealer has opened multiple accounts. Snap has unique

15 control over its product and has the ability to make unilateral changes to its product to discourage

16 and stop Snapchat Dealers from using Snapchat to make illicit drug sales. Snap knows these sales

17 are inherently harmful to minor users.

18 D. Inadequate Parental Control and Monitoring

19 423. Defendant Snap has intentionally designed its Snapchat product to frustrate the

20 exercise of parental responsibility by its minor users’ parents. Parents have a right to monitor their

21 children’s social media activity to protect them from harm. Snap has designed a product that makes

22 it difficult and often impossible for parents to exercise parental responsibility.

23 424. It is feasible to design a social media product that actually requires parental consent

24 for users under the age of 18 and actually prohibits users under the age of 13.

25 425. Defendant Snap’s products are also defective for lack of parental controls,

26 permission, and monitoring capability available on many other devices and applications.

27 426. Defendant Snap’s products are designed with specific product features intended to

28 prevent and/or interfere with parents’ reasonable and lawful exercise of parental control,

COMPLAINT 96
 1 permission, and monitoring capability available on many other devices and applications.

2 427. Parents of minor users do not reasonably expect that Snapchat’s design allows

3 children to evade parental authority by using its disappearing message feature or opening multiple

4 accounts to receive communications from drug dealers and other malign actors. Snap has the

5 ability to know when minor users are setting up multiple accounts but chooses to do nothing about

6 that information for its own economic gain.

7 E. Design of Addictive Social Media Products

8 428. As designed, Defendant Snap’s social media product is addictive to minor users,

9 including as follows: When minors use design features such as “streaks” it causes their brains to

10 release dopamine, which creates short term euphoria. However, as soon as dopamine is released,

11 minor users’ brains adapt by reducing or “downregulating” the number of dopamine receptors that

12 are stimulated and their euphoria is countered by dejection. In normal stimulatory environments,

13 this dejection abates, and neutrality is restored. However, Snapchat is designed to exploit users’

14 natural tendency to counteract dejection by going back to the source of pleasure for another dose

15 of euphoria. As this pattern continues over a period of months and the neurological baseline to

16 trigger minor users’ dopamine responses increases, they continue to use the social media products

17 at issue, not for enjoyment, but simply to feel normal. Once they stop using these products, minor

18 users experience the universal symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance including

19 anxiety, irritability, insomnia, and craving.

20 429. Defendant Snap’s advertising profits are directly tied to the quantity of its users’

21 online time and engagement, and its product features are designed to maximize the time users

22 spend using the product through product designs that addict them to the platform. Reasonable

23 minor users and their parents do not expect that online social media platforms are psychologically

24 and neurologically addictive.

25 430. It is feasible to make Defendant Snap’s product not addictive to minor users by

26 turning off or even simply slowing recommendation technologies, limiting the frequency and

27 duration of access, and suspending service during sleeping hours. Designing software that limits

28 the frequency and duration of minor users’ screen use and suspends service during sleeping hours

COMPLAINT 97
 1 could be accomplished at negligible cost; whereas the benefit of minor users maintaining healthy

2 sleep patterns would be a significant reduction in depression, attempted and completed suicide,

3 and other forms self-harm among this vulnerable age cohort.

4 COUNT II – STRICT LIABILITY (Risk-Benefit Test)

5 431. Plaintiffs reallege each of the allegations in the preceding paragraphs as if fully set

6 forth herein.

7 432. The preventable risks arising from Snapchat’s design outweighs its benefits.

8 433. Snapchat design features such as disappearing messages, “My Eyes Only,” “Quick

9 Add,” disappearing “Stories,” and public profiles pose a grave risk of harm to foreseeable users

10 and alternative safer designs are not only feasible at minimal cost to Snap but are widely available

11 on other social media platforms. Disappearing messages, “My Eyes Only,” “Quick Add,”

12 disappearing “Stories,” and public profiles provide negligible legitimate benefits to users or society

13 yet, as set forth above, have caused grave harms to users, their families, and society.

14 434. Snap knows that Snapchat Dealers are using its product in this way, and Snap

15 knows why they are choosing to use Snapchat instead of other social media products – the answer

16 to which relates to how Snap designs, distributes, markets, and programs its product. Snap

17 likewise knows or should know that it can exponentially reduce the number of children lost to

18 counterfeit pills and Fentanyl poisoning being trafficked via and because of the Snapchat product

19 without having to review, censor, modify, or delete a single piece of third-party content. Snap can

20 make reasonable, necessary, and unilateral product changes to protect its young users from the

21 harms its product is causing in its current form. To name only a few examples, Snap could,

22 • Stop marketing to children.

• Stop utilizing manipulative and unfair extended use designs meant to cause harmful
23 dependencies in its minor users.
24 • Take reasonable steps to verify age, identity, and (in the case of minor users) parental
25 consent.
• Stop distributing to minors when their parents do not consent.
26
• Provide reasonable reporting mechanisms and act immediately on all reports of
27 predators and drug dealers on its platforms (act at the account level and not the
28 content level).

COMPLAINT 98
 1 • Enforce its one account limit using Device ID and other data in its possession, which
would then reduce the ability of violators to simply close and open new accounts.
2
• Provide warnings to minor users and their parents about the dangers of the Snapchat
3 product.
4 • Retain all data for a period of up to 12 months and make such evidence available in
the event of law enforcement investigation; and, more importantly, notify all users
5 that data is retained on the backend for this purpose instead of telling them that all of
their data disappears.
6
• Stop distributing its My Eyes Only product, which is inherently dangerous with no
7 countervailing benefit to consumers who (in the case of all consumers except minors)
8 already have a passcode on both their electronic device and their Snapchat account
and the ability to refuse to share information stored in their own device and account.
9
• Stop targeting minors with advertisements and stop allowing advertisers to target on
10 the basis of things like a specific user’s age, gender, and location.

11 • Stop collecting and utilizing data about minors for advertisement and programming
purposes, especially invasive forms of data and data that Snap then utilizes to
12 program its algorithms in such a way that they discriminate on the basis of sex, age,
gender, and other protected categories.
13
• Limit or stop distributing its direct messaging product in connection with minor
14 accounts.
15 • Limit or stop using its Quick Add algorithm product in connection with minor
accounts.
16
• Limit or stop allowing users to find other users based on public stories features and/or
17 Snap location products and stop allowing any location features for minor users.
18 • Limit the time and/or hours of the day a minor user can use its product.
19 • Stop setting profiles to public by default and not allow public profiles for minor users.

20 • Stop programming its algorithms for engagement over health and well-being, which
includes various elements such as the data it uses, programmed goals, operation and
21 output speed, and other decisions Snap makes on a daily basis.
22 COUNT III – STRICT PRODUCT LIABILITY (Failure to Warn)

23 435. Plaintiffs reallege each of the allegations in the preceding paragraphs as if fully set

24 forth herein

25 436. Based on Snapchat’s design, it is foreseeable that minor users such as Plaintiffs’

26 children will be connected to drug dealers through Snapchat with whom they would not otherwise

27 connect and that ordinary users and/or their parents would not aware or this risk.

28 437. Defendant Snap’s product is not reasonably safe as designed because, despite

COMPLAINT 99
 1 numerous reported instances of drug dealers using Snapchat and of the death of minors and young

2 adult users due to Fentanyl poisoning and facilitated through the Snapchat product, Snap has not

3 undertaken reasonable design changes to protect its users from these harms, including notifying

4 parents of underage users when they have been messaged or solicited by an adult user or even

5 taking down reported drug dealer accounts. Indeed, despite this knowledge Snap does not have a

6 reporting mechanism users and parents can use to report drug dealing activity and other Snapchat

7 terms violations and harms. Snap’s failure to provide a reasonable reporting mechanism for known

8 harms is incomprehensible.

9 438. It is reasonable for parents to expect that platforms such as Snapchat, which actively

10 promote their services to minors, will undertake reasonable efforts to protect such users from

11 malign actors and harms, and implement technological safeguards to notify parents by text, email,

12 or other reasonable means that their child is in danger.

13 439. Defendant Snap’s product is unreasonably dangerous and defective because it

14 contains no warning to users or parents regarding the addictive design and effects of Snapchat or

15 preponderance of use of Snapchat to sell drugs (including deadly counterfeit pills) to minors and

16 young adults.

17 440. Snap failed to warn users or parents that their children would be approached by

18 strangers, due to recommendations made by the Snapchat product, who would harm them.

19 441. Defendant Snap’s product is unreasonably dangerous because its lacks any

20 warnings that foreseeable product use can disrupt healthy sleep patterns or specific warnings to

21 parents when their child’s product usage exceeds healthy levels or occurs during sleep hours.

22 Excessive screen time is harmful to adolescents’ mental health and sleep patterns and emotional

23 well-being. Reasonable and responsible parents are not able to accurately monitor their child’s

24 screen time because most adolescents own or can obtain access to mobile devices and engage in

25 social media use outside their parents’ presence.

26 442. It is feasible for Defendant Snap to provide warnings and to make other product

27 related modifications that would prevent many of these harms at negligible cost to Snap.

28 443. As a result of Defendant Snap’s failure to warn, Plaintiffs suffered economic and

COMPLAINT 100
 1 non-economic damages.

2 COUNT IV – NEGLIGENCE (Design Defect)

3 444. Plaintiffs reallege each of the allegations in the preceding paragraphs as if fully set

4 forth herein.

5 445. Defendant Snap is responsible for the design, manufacture, and marketing of

6 Snapchat, and Snapchat is a product.

7 446. At all relevant times, Defendant Snap had a duty to exercise reasonable care and

8 caution for the safety of individuals using its Snapchat product, including Plaintiffs’ children.

9 447. Defendant Snap owe a heightened duty of care to minor and young adult users of

10 its Snapchat product because adolescents’ brains are not fully developed which results in a

11 diminished capacity to make responsible decisions regarding social media use, eschew self-

12 destructive behaviors, and overcome emotional and psychological harm from negative and

13 dangerous social media encounters.

14 448. Defendant Snap was negligent, grossly negligent, reckless and/or careless in that it

15 failed to exercise ordinary care and caution for the safety of those children and young adults to

16 whom it provided its Snapchat social media product, teens and young adults like Juan Jiménez

17 Trujillo, Lauren Lujan, Cole Brown, Michael Leonardo, Dylan Moore, Moses “Malik”

18 Majekodunmi, Kevin “Andrew” Hutchings, Jaylen Penix, and Allie Higdon.

19 449. Defendant Snap was negligent in failing to conduct adequate testing and failing to

20 allow independent academic researchers to adequately study the effects of its products and levels

21 of problematic use amongst minors and young adults.

22 450. Snap also was negligent in failing to conduct adequate testing about the dangerous

23 posed by its disappearing product features, rewards systems, and other tools and features that have

24 resulted in inherently harmful and problematic usage of the Snapchat product.

25 451. Snap knows that its products are harmful, is capable of causing and does cause

26 extensive mental and physical harms to Snap’s youngest users, and that users are engaging in

27 problematic and addictive use that parents, in the case of minor users, and users themselves are

28 helpless to monitor and prevent.

COMPLAINT 101
 1 452. Defendant Snap was negligent in failing to fully assess, investigate, and restrict the

2 use of its Snapchat social media product by adults to sell drugs to minor and young adult Snapchat

3 users, and was negligent in designing its product in a manner that it knew or should have known

4 would encourage and facilitate such drug deals and in failing to warn users and the general public

5 (including parents) about these known dangerous arising from use of the Snapchat product.

6 453. Defendant Snap was negligent in failing to provide users and parents the tools to

7 ensure their social media products are used in a limited and safe manner by underage users.

8 454. Defendant Snap was negligent in failing to enforce and to provide any form of

9 reasonable reporting and enforcement mechanism as required to fulfill its promises to users and

10 the general public, including but not limited to Snap’s commitments regarding age and consent

11 restrictions for use of its product and immediate action in the case of reported drug dealers and

12 other product use terms violations. People have died as a result of these negligent failures.

13 455. Defendant Snap easily could have but to this day has failed to implement safety

14 measures that would mitigate, reduce, and/or eliminate the above-described harms, which their

15 product causes to minor uses.

16 456. As a direct and proximate result of Defendant Snap’s negligence, Juan Jiménez

17 Trujillo, Lauren Lujan, Cole Brown, Michael Leonardo, Dylan Moore, Moses “Malik”

18 Majekodunmi, Kevin “Andrew” Hutchings, Jaylen Penix, and Allie Higdon suffered severe mental

19 harm from their use of the Snapchat product and death.

20 457. As a direct and proximate result of Defendant Snap’s negligence, Plaintiffs suffered

21 severe emotional distress and pecuniary hardship due to their children’s mental and physical harms

22 resulting from use of the Snapchat product, which harms were foreseeable by Snap.

23 458. Defendant Snap’s conduct was carried on with a willful and conscious disregard

24 for the safety of Plaintiffs’ children and other minor users of the Snapchat product. Snap knew

25 and, based on information it received from parents and law enforcement, as well as the existing

26 scientific and medical literature, should have known about the risks to minors associated with the

27 Snapchat product. Yet Snap chose to ignore those risks, downplay any safety issues in public

28 statements, conceal knowledge relating to its product and associated harms, fail to warn minors

COMPLAINT 102
 1 and their parents, and delay implementation of feasible product safety features. Snap’s decision

2 to prioritize profits over children’s safety and health is outrageous and justifies an award of

3 exemplary damages pursuant to California Code § 3294, in such a sum that will serve to deter

4 Defendant Snap and other social media companies from similar conduct in the future

5 459. As a direct and proximate result of Defendant Snap’s negligent design, Plaintiffs

6 suffered economic and non-economic damages.

7 COUNT V – NEGLIGENCE (Failure to Warn)

8 460. Plaintiffs reallege each of the allegations in the preceding paragraphs as if fully set

9 forth herein.

10 461. Defendant Snap has actual and/or constructive knowledge that Snapchat’s unique

11 product features are widely used by drug dealers to sell Fentanyl-contaminated drugs to minors

12 and young adults yet has failed to warn minors users or their parents of this clear and present

13 danger. In many instances, Snap has the ability to identify users who are engaged in the sale of

14 illegal drugs to minors but often fails to take steps to report dealers to law enforcement or warn

15 users and/or their parents of malign actors lurking on its platform. Snap does not even have

16 reasonable reporting mechanisms users and parents can use to report drug dealing activity and

17 other Snapchat terms violations and harms. On the contrary, when parents do attempt to report

18 known drug dealing activity, Snap often disregards and/or ignores those reports, opting instead to

19 profit from the continued illegal activities. Snap’s failure to provide a reasonable reporting

20 mechanism and its failure to act as to reports it does receive is incomprehensible.

21 462. Defendant Snap knew or reasonably should have known that Snapchat can be

22 dangerous to pre-teens, teens, and young adults when used in its intended or reasonably foreseeable

23 manner. Defendant Snap also know or reasonably should have known that ordinary users of

24 Snapchat, including pre-teens, teens, and young adults, would not appreciate those dangers.

25 463. As a product manufacturer marketing and selling products to consumers, Defendant

26 Snap had a duty to exercise ordinary care in the manufacture, marketing, and sale of its Snapchat

27 product, including a duty to warn users and, in the case of minor users, to warn their parents about

28 the many hazards that Snap knew to be present, but not obvious.

COMPLAINT 103
 1 464. Defendant Snap does not post or display warnings that the Snapchat product

2 includes product features that are addictive, particularly to persons under 26 years old; that Snap

3 collects and utilizes user data to make its product progressively more addictive; that Snap connects

4 strangers to children and vice versa, for its own economic gain; that Snap allows children to

5 communication with strangers; that Snap has designed its product to thwart parental supervision,

6 and encourages drug dealers and other predators; that Snapchat is not suitable for children under

7 18 without parental supervision; or that Snap has inadequate reporting mechanisms, and will not

8 notify parents in the event that their child is engaging in harmful use of its social media product.

9 465. Defendant Snap was negligent in failing to provide adequate warnings about the

10 dangers associated with the use of its Snapchat social media product and in failing to advise users

11 and the general public (including parents) about how and when to safely use the Snapchat product

12 and features.

13 466. As a direct and proximate result of Defendant Snap’s negligent failure to warn,

14 Plaintiffs suffered economic and non-economic damages.

15 COUNT VI – NEGLIGENCE (Infliction of Emotional Distress)

16 467. Plaintiffs realleges each of the allegations in the preceding paragraphs as if fully set

17 forth herein.

18 468. Defendant Snap owed a duty to exercise reasonable care and caution for the safety

19 of minors and young adults using the Snapchat product, and breached its duty to exercise

20 reasonable care through its negligent design of Snapchat, its failure to warn users or their parents

21 of any of the safety risks caused by use of Snapchat, and its calculated cost-benefit decisions to

22 not fix, restrict, or remove those dangerous product features and to not even act on instances of

23 actual knowledge of the harms its product was causing.

24 469. As a direct and proximate result of Defendant Snap’s negligence, Plaintiffs – the

25 parents whose children were severely harmed and even killed because of Snapchat’s decisions,

26 failures to warn, and refusals to act – suffered serious emotional distress. When a manufacturer

27 targets minors and causes harm to them, the natural consequence of that is harm to their parents

28 and/or guardians and immediate family. Snap not only manufactured and distributed a defective

COMPLAINT 104
 1 and inherently dangerous product, but it placed that product into Plaintiffs’ home without their

2 knowledge or consent under a false pretense, targeting their own children.

3 470. Defendant Snap is further liable to Plaintiffs for punitive damages based upon its

4 extreme departure from the ordinary standard of conduct and its reckless disregard for the

5 wellbeing of minor users. Snap’s actions are morally blameworthy, given its failure to change

6 Snapchat to avoid harm to Plaintiffs despite its knowledge of the harms it was causing. Punitive

7 damages should be awarded to prevent future harm from Snap’s negligence.

8 471. Defendant Snap chose to prioritize profits over children’s safety and health, which

9 decisions were outrageous and justify an award of exemplary damages pursuant to California Code

10 § 3294, in such a sum that will serve to deter Defendant Snap and other social media companies

11 from similar conduct in the future.

12 COUNT VII –UNJUST ENRICHMENT

13 472. Plaintiffs reallege each of the allegations in the preceding paragraphs as if fully set

14 forth herein.

15 473. As a result of Defendant Snap’s conduct detailed herein, Snap received significant

16 benefits. Because Snap’s advertising profits are directly tied to the number of user accounts and

17 the amount of time those users spend on Snapchat, it benefited directly from its engineered

18 addiction of Plaintiffs’ child and its failure to enforce its terms of use as those relate to age

19 restrictions, allowing of multiple accounts, and action to block known drug dealer accounts. Snap

20 benefited from the time these users spent on its platform, which is why it failed to act despite its

21 knowledge of the irreparable harms its products were causing to Plaintiffs and their child.

22 474. Moreover, because Snap’s advertising profits are directly tied to the number of user

23 accounts and the amount of time those users spend on Snapchat, it benefited directly from refusing

24 to provide any information about its Snapchat social media product and refusing to provide any

25 way for parents to make any report at all without opening their own Snapchat accounts – only to

26 then not respond to and otherwise render the inadequate reporting mechanisms available for

27 account holders meaningless. Snap benefited from every account opened and used by Juan Jiménez

28 Trujillo, Lauren Lujan, Cole Brown, Michael Leonardo, Dylan Moore, Moses “Malik”

COMPLAINT 105
 1 Majekodunmi, Kevin “Andrew” Hutchings, Jaylen Penix, and Allie Higdon.

2 475. It would be unjust and inequitable for Defendant Snap to retain the ill-gotten

3 benefits at Plaintiffs’ expense, in light of Snap’s acts and omissions described herein.

4 476. Accordingly, Plaintiffs seek damages in an amount to be proven at trial.

5 COUNT VIII – INVASION OF PRIVACY

6 (California Constitutional Right to Privacy, Cal. Const. Art. 1, § 1)

7 477. Plaintiffs reallege each of the allegations in the preceding paragraphs as if fully set

8 forth herein.

9 478. Defendant Snap intentionally intruded upon Plaintiffs’ solitude, seclusion, or

10 private affairs by knowingly designing its Snapchat product with features that were intended to,

11 and did, frustrate parents’ ability to monitor and control their children’s social media usage.

12 479. These intrusions are highly offensive to a reasonable person, particularly given

13 Defendant Snap’s interference with the fundamental right of parenting and its exploitation of

14 children’s special vulnerabilities for commercial gain, as well as its failure to warn and active

15 concealment of known harms.

16 480. Plaintiffs were harmed by Defendant Snap’s invasion of privacy, as detailed herein.

17 481. Plaintiffs therefore seek compensatory and punitive damages in amounts to be

18 determined at trial, as well as injunctive relief requiring Defendant Snap to cease the harmful

19 practices described throughout this Complaint.

20 COUNT IX – PUBLIC NUISANCE

21 (Cal. Civil Code §§ 3479, 3480, 3491, 3493)

22 482. Plaintiffs reallege each of the allegations in the preceding paragraphs as if fully set

23 forth herein.

24 483. California Civil Code § 3479 provides that “[a]nything which is injurious to health

25 . . . or is indecent or offensive to the senses, or an obstruction to the free use of property, so as to

26 interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property . . . is a nuisance.”

27 484. California Civil Code § 3480 defines a “public nuisance” as “one which affects at

28 the same time an entire community or neighborhood, or any considerable number of persons,

COMPLAINT 106
 1 although the extent of the annoyance or damage inflicted upon individuals may be unequal.”

2 485. California Civil Code § 3480 defines a “public nuisance” as “one which affects at

3 the same time an entire community or neighborhood, or any considerable number of persons,

4 although the extent of the annoyance or damage inflicted upon individuals may be unequal.”

5 486. California Civil Code § 3490 provides that “[n]o lapse of time can legalize a public

6 nuisance, amounting to an actual obstruction of public right.”

7 487. Defendant Snap has acted in a way injurious to the public health and interfered with

8 the comfortable enjoyment of life and property of Plaintiffs by, among other things,

9 (a) affirmatively distributing the Snapchat product to minors users below the age of 13 (b)

10 affirmatively distributing the Snapchat product to minors users below 18 without parental consent,

11 (c) obtaining parental consent via concealment and failure to warn known and material dangers

12 that a reasonable user and/or their parents could not ascertain, (d) connecting users, including

13 children, teens, and young adults, to drug dealers and other Snapchat predators, (e) encouraging

14 advertisers to design ads that appeal to minors, (f) intentionally designing its social media product

15 to frustrate the exercise of parental responsibility by minor users’ parents, (g) designing its social

16 media product to create “public” profiles for minor users by default, (h) designing social media

17 products that are deliberately and dangerously addictive to minor users, (i) designing its product

18 in a manner that encourages, enables, facilitates, and assists in the deadly sale of counterfeit

19 prescription medications to children, teens, and young adults, (j) extensive failures to warn users

20 or their parents of known dangers.

21 488. Defendant Snap has unreasonably interfered with the public health, safety, peace

22 and comfort of Plaintiffs and other California residents by, among other things, failing to provide

23 adequate safeguards against minor users being connected to drug dealers and other Snapchat

24 predators, failing to verify minor users’ ages and identities, failing to provide parental controls,

25 permission, and monitoring capability, failing to adequately protect minor users from harm, failing

26 to adequately notify the parents of minor users of dangerous and problematic social media usage

27 by minor users, and failing to warn minor users and their parents about the addictive design and

28 effects of their social media products.

COMPLAINT 107
 1 489. As described above, by acting and by failing to act, Defendant Snap has knowingly

2 and intentionally created and allowed to exist a condition that is harmful to the health and well-

3 being of a substantial number of people – more than half of California’s teen and young adult

4 population, in fact – and including increased rates of mental and physical health injuries such as

5 depression, anxiety, self-harm, social media addiction, sleep deprivation, and substance abuse.

6 490. An ordinary person would be reasonably disturbed and/or annoyed by the condition

7 Defendant Snap has created and allowed to exist.

8 491. The seriousness of the harm caused by Defendant Snap’s conduct is not outweighed

9 by the social utility of that conduct. On the contrary, the only utility of Snap’s conduct and cost-

10 benefit decisions as described throughout this complaint has been Snap’s own profit and growth.

11 492. Plaintiffs did not consent to Defendant Snap’s conduct.

12 493. Plaintiffs have further suffered special injury and damages as a direct and proximate

13 result of Defendant Snap’s conduct, including the death of their children because of the Snapchat

14 product and decisions Snap made in connection with the same. The harm suffered by Plaintiffs is

15 different in kind, not merely in degree, from the type of harm suffered by the general public.

16 494. Defendant Snap’s conduct was a substantial factor in causing Plaintiffs’ harms.

17 495. Many of these Plaintiffs have other minor children and/or loved ones still at risk

18 and all Plaintiffs seek legal and equitable relief, including that Snap be required to:

19 • Take reasonable steps to verify age, identity, and (in the case of minor users) parental
consent.
20
• Stop distributing to minors when their parents do not consent.
21 • Provide reasonable reporting mechanisms and act immediately on all reports of
22 predators and drug dealers on its platforms (act at the account level and not the
content level).
23 • Enforce its one account limit using Device ID and other data in its possession, which
24 would then reduce the ability of violators to simply close and open new accounts.

25 • Provide warnings to minor users and their parents about the dangers of the Snapchat
product.
26 • Retain all data for a period of up to 12 months and make such evidence available in
27 the event of law enforcement investigation; and, more importantly, notify all users
that data is retained on the backend for this purpose instead of telling them that all of
28 their data disappears.

COMPLAINT 108
 1 • Stop distributing its My Eyes Only product, which is inherently dangerous with no
countervailing benefit to consumers who (in the case of all consumers except minors)
2 already have a passcode on both their electronic device and their Snapchat account
and the ability to refuse to share information stored in their own device and account.
3
• Stop targeting minors with advertisements and stop allowing advertisers to target on
4 the basis of things like a specific user’s age, gender, and location.
5 • Stop collecting and utilizing data about minors for advertisement and programming
purposes, especially invasive forms of data and data that Snap then utilizes to
6
program its algorithms in such a way that they discriminate on the basis of sex, age,
7 gender, and other protected categories.

8 • Limit or stop distributing its direct messaging product in connection with minor
accounts.
9
• Limit or stop using its Quick Add algorithm product in connection with minor
10 accounts.

11 • Limit or stop allowing users to find other users based on public stories features and/or
Snap location products and stop allowing any location features for minor users.
12
• Limit the time and/or hours of the day a minor user can use its product.
13 • Stop setting profiles to public by default and not allow public profiles for minor users.
14 • Stop programming its algorithms for engagement over health and well-being, which
includes various elements such as the data it uses, programmed goals, operation and
15
output speed, and other decisions Snap makes on a daily basis
16 COUNT X – AIDING AND ABETTING
17 398 Plaintiffs reallege each of the allegations in the preceding paragraphs as if fully set
18 forth herein.
19 496. Defendant Snap encouraged and assisted each of the above-referenced Snapchat
20 Dealers in their use of Snap’s unique product features to sell deadly counterfeit pills to each of
21 Plaintiffs’ children, and each of those children died as a result.
22 497. Snap designed its disappearing message and disappearing Stories products to
23 appeal to users who did not want their activities to be discoverable, as they would be with most
24 other messaging products, i.e. text messages, emails, letters, instant messaging, even other social
25 media products. Snap still is the only social media product that advertises disappearing data
26 products and operates them as default and/or mandatory, and it does so despite knowledge that
27 these product features are encouraging, assisting, and enabling deadly drug sales.
28 498. Snap doubled down with its “My Eyes Only” product, which is a hidden, self-

COMPLAINT 109
 1 destructing data vault – a product Snap’s competitors have declined to copy, likely due to the high

2 risk of harm and complete lack of public benefit or utility. My Eyes Only further encouraged and

3 assisted these Snapchat Dealers by providing them with a place to store their information and

4 records of illegal activity with no risk of detection or discovery by law enforcement. Snap claims

5 that even Snap cannot access data stored in My Eyes Only and while it permits pin reset for users

6 who forget their pin, the reset process effectively incinerates all data currently stored in My Eyes

7 Only. According to Snap, that data is not recoverable by anyone once a user resets their pin.

8 499. Snap also designs its product to connect dealers to young users and provides tools

9 it knows dealers are using the find children in their vicinity that they otherwise would not be able

10 to find. Examples of these designs and specific Snapchat tools include but are not limited to Snap’s

11 refusal to verify age and identity, public profile settings, public Stories and direct message

12 products, and Snap Map location features and tools.

13 500. At all times relevant, Snap knew or should have known of its role and provision of

14 assistance in these illegal drug dealing activities. Moreover, at some point, Snap had actual and

15 undeniable knowledge, including because of warrants and preservation notices it received from

16 authorities and public reports of children dying via Snapchat fentanyl sales of counterfeit pills.

17 Snap knew that it was encouraging and assisting in these criminal activities, and it knew that it

18 was actively luring more young users into these inherently dangerous and deadly situations – but

19 continued to do so regardless, and for the purpose of increasing its own engagement and popularity.

20 501. Snap facilitates and profits from designing and distributing products that market

21 and sell lethal drugs to young users. Snap was compliant “but neither dumb nor duped,” and chose

22 to stay the course to secure its own long-term success and fortune. See Halberstam v. Welch, 705

23 F.2d. 472 (D.C. Cir. 1983).

24 502. Plaintiffs were harmed by Defendant Snap’s aiding and abetting of Snapchat

25 Dealers, as detailed herein, and therefore seek compensatory and punitive damages in amounts to

26 be determined at trial.

27 DEMAND FOR JURY TRIAL

28 Plaintiffs hereby demand a trial by jury.

COMPLAINT 110
 1 PRAYER FOR RELIEF

2 WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs prays for judgment against Defendant Snap for relief as

3 follows:

4 1. Past physical and mental pain and suffering of each of Plaintiffs’ children, in

5 amounts to be more readily ascertained at the time and place set for trial.
6 2. Loss of future income and earning capacity of each of Plaintiffs’ children.
7 3. Past and future medical expenses of each of Plaintiffs’ children.
8 4. Monetary and emotional damages suffered by Plaintiffs.
9 5. Injunctive relief.
10 6. Punitive damages.
11 7. Reasonable costs, attorney, and expert/consultant fees incurred in this action.
12 8. Such other and further relief as this Court deems just and equitable.
13
DATED this 23rd day of February 2023.
14
SOCIAL MEDIA VICTIMS LAW CENTER PLLC
15
16 By:
Laura Marquez Garrett, SBN 221542
17
Laura Marquez Garrett
18 laura@socialmediavictims.org
19 Matthew Bergman (pro hac vice anticipated)
matt@socialmediavictims.org
20 Glenn Draper (pro hac vice anticipated)
glenn@socialmediavictims.org
21 Sydney Lottes, SBN 345387
22 sydney@socialmediavictims.org
SOCIAL MEDIA VICTIMS LAW CENTER
23 821 Second Avenue, Suite 2100
Seattle, WA 98104
24 Telephone: (206) 741-4862
25 Facsimile: (206) 957-9549

26 Attorneys for Plaintiffs

27
28

COMPLAINT 111