Heartbroken Parent Calls for Social Media Regulations to Combat Drug Sales to Youth

A teenager looks at a phone in London on Jan. 17, 2023. Leon Neal/Getty Images

Parents often believe that home is the safest place for their children, but with the rise of social media, that may no longer be the case.

Samuel Chapman and Laura Berman lost their 16-year-old son, Sammy, in 2021 after he overdosed on a fentanyl-laced pill from a dealer he allegedly connected with on Snapchat.

“A lethal dose of a counterfeit drug was delivered to our home after we were asleep, like a pizza,” Chapman said in an episode of EpochTV’s “California Insider.” “Our son died. ... while we were on lockdown. We thought he was in the safest place in the world, in our home.”

Chapman said that while fentanyl is already an epidemic in the United States, online platforms only exacerbate the crisis.

“Social media is solving the last-mile problem for the drug dealers,” he said. “You used to have to go to a dangerous neighborhood or to a park at night to get your drugs, and now they just get delivered at home and it’s super dangerous.”

Since the loss of his son, Chapman has been actively warning parents about the risks of social media in facilitating drug trafficking. He has also worked to help pass state laws to better regulate these platforms, which he believes can have a broader and more-lasting impact on protecting young people.

In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 976, a measure aimed at protecting children from social media addiction by regulating the use of algorithms on these platforms.

“They take the data from our children, and they use it to drive things that make them stay on the platform, or that give them ads that are directed toward them, not necessarily healthy for them,” Chapman said. “Where things go wrong is that a lot of these algorithms are meant for adults.”

He said that if a child expresses feelings of depression, for example, the algorithm might display disturbing content such as “suicide baiting” messages. Similarly, if a young girl searches for a salad dressing recipe, the algorithm could quickly start showing content related to eating disorders, such as advice on hiding bulimia.

Chapman said that Snapchat and other social media platforms are designed to be addictive.

“It’s really meant to trigger adrenaline and keep you going. They also have the endless scrolling that keeps the kids on the platforms,” he said.

A 2021 report from Common Sense Media found that teenagers use entertainment media for an average of more than 8.5 hours per day, while tweens ages 8 to 12 spend about 5.5 hours daily, not including time spent on school-related media.

Chapman said social media platforms could risk losing users if they implement restrictions.

“They could flip the switch tomorrow and make these platforms safe for our children,” he said. “The reason they don’t is because they get rewarded every three months when they announce to Wall Street the number of users that they have, and if that number goes down, their stock price gets hit.”

In 2022, Chapman and Berman joined a lawsuit, along with dozens of other parents, against Snap Inc.

The lawsuit claims that Snapchat’s unique features—such as disappearing messages, geolocation capabilities, and the My Eyes Only privacy option—make it difficult to monitor illegal activities and are particularly appealing to drug dealers.

Pop-Up Warnings

Although not directly in response to the lawsuit, Snapchat rolled out new features in June to protect teenagers, such as pop-up warnings when teens receive messages from strangers, people who have been blocked or reported, or locations outside the teen’s usual network.

The platform also blocks friend requests altogether when teens try to connect with someone with whom they don’t share mutual friends, especially if that person has a history of using Snapchat in countries commonly linked to scamming.

“Taken together, these two updates continue our work to address a growing trend of sophisticated sextortion scams, committed by financially motivated bad actors, typically located outside the U.S.,” Snap Inc. said in a June announcement.

While users can share their location only with friends, Snapchat has also simplified the feature to allow users to manage all location settings in one place, the statement said. The platform also added more frequent reminders to help users stay informed about which friends they are sharing their location with.

Snapchat did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Meta’s vice president and global head of safety, Antigone Davis, said in July that she does not believe social media has “done harm to our children.”

“I think that social media has provided tremendous benefits,” she said, highlighting how teenagers use it to build community, stay connected with friends, and explore their interests.

“I think that it is our responsibility as a company to ensure that teens can be able to take advantage of those benefits of social media in a safe and positive environment.”

Censorship Concerns

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights organization, opposes the regulations, saying they could result in excessive censorship as platforms might limit protected speech to avoid legal risks.

There are concerns that more regulations could suppress content on sensitive issues, with the foundation warning that officials might target information about risky sports or even news and political commentary on social media if it is deemed to contribute to anxiety or depression.

They also criticized the age verification requirement, saying it could violate privacy rights by requiring personal identification, which could pose security risks, and tracking online activities.

“These systems require everyone—adults and minors—to verify their age. All age verification systems burden the rights of adults to read, get information, and speak and browse online anonymously,” the foundation said in a statement.

What Lawmaker Says

In recent years, several legislative efforts have sought to curb the use of social media in drug sales, particularly targeting youth, but repeated attempts have fallen short.

State Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh said that the failed attempts may be partly because of a misunderstanding of the nature of the deaths.

A photo of 14-year-old Alexander Neville, who died after accidentally taking fentanyl, is held in Irvine, Calif., on April 28, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

“There’s a thought process that people who are dying from fentanyl poisoning are actually drug users and need to be dealt with from that angle,” Ochoa Bogh said in the “California Insider” episode.

But often, these pills are purchased for seemingly innocent reasons, such as managing anxiety or depression, or staying awake to study, she said.

“There was a lot of contention between family members and friends who had lost loved ones because they thought they were purchasing medication,” she said. “[But] what we ended up seeing is ... a lot of youth ... dying because of fentanyl poisoning.”

Ochoa Bogh recounted her experience listening to the stories of victims during a Public Safety Committee meeting in 2020.

“I heard testimonials of parents, siblings, friends, who have lost loved ones because of fentanyl-laced products,” she said. “I had never felt as vulnerable as a parent as I did during that committee. It was the most emotionally draining committee hearing I had ever heard.”

Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh speaks at a news conference for her Senate Bill 1368 at the Capitol on April 24. Travis Gillmore/The Epoch Times

“I remember texting my children literally in the middle of that hearing. ... and saying, ‘Please, please, do not purchase anything off any social media platform. Don’t do it.’”

She said that in most cases, the victims believed that they were buying medication in a generic and more affordable form.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reported that 60 percent of fentanyl-laced counterfeit prescription pills tested in 2022 contained a potentially lethal dose, up from 40 percent in 2021.

“These pills are being mass-produced by the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco cartel in Mexico,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a statement accompanying the report. “Never take a pill that wasn’t prescribed directly to you. Never take a pill from a friend. Never take a pill bought on social media. Just one pill is dangerous and one pill can kill.”

The DEA seized more than 80 million fentanyl-laced fake pills and nearly 12,000 pounds of fentanyl powder in 2023. The agency said the seizures were equivalent to more than 390 million lethal doses of fentanyl.

In 2024, fentanyl seizures represented more than 292 million deadly doses so far, the agency stated on its website.

The agency also reported last year that a significant portion of the trafficked fentanyl is mixed with xylazine, known as “Tranq,” a powerful veterinary sedative. This combination can be even more deadly than fentanyl alone because Narcan, the medication commonly used to reverse opioid overdoses, is ineffective against xylazine.

Savannah Hulsey Pointer contributed to this report.