Tech giants blasted by whistleblowers in Can’t Look Away social media documentary

Whistleblowers and grieving families have levelled damning accusations against social media giants for bombarding vulnerable kids with depressing content glorifying eating disorders and self-harm.

One month after 14-year-old Englyn Roberts took her own life, her distraught dad Toney turned to her phone for answers about why his little girl was gone.

There, in her saved videos on Instagram was a woman giving a tutorial on a specific method to suicide.

“Exactly what that lady did on that video is what our child did,” Mr Roberts said.

Almost five years later, he says that video is still online and being fed into the algorithms of vulnerable children like Englyn.

Whistleblowers who have worked for some of the world’s biggest social media platforms say the companies know exactly the harm they are causing to children, but have prioritised profits over child safety.

In a newly released documentary, Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media, former employees, lawyers and grieving families have levelled damning accusations against tech giants including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat.

Can't Look Away documentary exposes the dark side of social media and its devastating impact on young users. Picture: Screengrab from Can’t Look Away

Can't Look Away a documentary directors Matthew O'Neill and Perri Peltz take viewers inside the high-stakes legal battle to hold tech companies accountable for the harm caused by their negligence and dangerous algorithms. Picture: Screengrab from Can’t Look Away

They say the companies bombard vulnerable kids with depressing content glorifying eating disorders and self-harm, and that Snapchat has become a breeding ground for drug dealers to target vulnerable kids.

Among the whistleblowers is Charles Baher who worked for TikTok in Germany.

In 2021, he conducted an experiment that found even if a user searched for inspiring content, it took just 15 minutes to fill their feed with dark quotes, and content about breakups, self-harm and eating disorders.

A scene from the documentary Can't Look Away. Picture: Screengrab from Can’t Look Away

He warned senior staff the algorithm was feeding its youngest users streams of depressing and harmful content but his pleas were ignored and he was later dismissed over allegations of expense account fraud.

He sued for wrongful dismissal in a case that settled out of court.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder, chairman and chief executive of Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Picture: Screengrab from Can’t Look Away

Based on the investigative reporting of Bloomberg News journalist Olivia Carville, the documentary profiles the extraordinary work of the Social Media Victims Law Centre (SMVLC) which represents the families of kids who been harmed by the platforms.

“I set this firm up because I think that unless the civil justice system gets involved and holds these companies accountable, we’re going to have several lost generations of kids,” SMVLC founding lawyer Matthew Bergman says in the video.

“The social media companies know what their products are doing to young people.

“They know the levels of addiction, they know the levels of suicide, but they have no legal brakes on their behaviour.”

A scene from the documentary Can’t Look Away.

One of his clients is Jennie DeSerio whose son Mason, a happy and vibrant teen who represented his school’s track and football teams before taking his life in 2022 after a break up.

“Four months after Mason passed I was pouring over his phone looking for answers, I started going through the TikToks the last two weeks of his life and one after another, after another after another were videos glorifying, promoting, normalising suicide,” she said.

“Mason never searched suicide, never, he was searching for ‘my girlfriend broke up with me’, ‘I have a broken heart’, he even searched for ‘positive affirmations’ – you’re searching for help and what you’re getting is suicide content.”

Mason died by the same suicide methods promoted to him in his social media feed.

Can't Look Away a documentary.

The documentary also exposes how drug dealers exploit the features of Snapchat to find and market their products to children – often selling them lethal pills.

One of those teens is Michael Brewer, who suffered serious brain damage after a drug dealer found him on Snapchat when he was just 13, bombarding him with “drug menus” and ultimately selling him what he thought was a Percocet painkiller but was actually laced with fentanyl.

Now confined to a wheelchair, his speech slurred and body suffering near-constant spasms, he is one of the few children who have survived and will give evidence in a lawsuit against the tech giant.

The social media companies are defending claims brought by the families in the documentary and they declined invitations to be interviewed by the filmmakers.

Originally published as Tech giants blasted by whistleblowers in Can’t Look Away social media documentary