Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms and TikTok owner ByteDance must face a wrongful death lawsuit over the 2023 death of a 15-year-old boy whom his mother said was incited by social media to take on “dangerous challenges”, New York state justice Paul Goetz ruled.

Goetz said Norma Nazario, the mother of Manhattan teenager Zackery Nazario, could try to prove her case that the social media firms “goaded” her son into the dangerous game of “subway surfing”, or riding on top of a moving subway car.

The lawsuit is one of thousands accusing social media platforms of encouraging addictive behaviour, especially amongst young people.

Legal immunity

Meta and ByteDance argued in January that they were immune from prosecution over user content under Section 230 of the US federal Communications Decency Act and free speech provisions in the US constitution.

Judge Goetz said Nazario had a “plausible” argument that the platforms had gone beyond the role of merely providing access to user content, due to their algorithms that tailor content to users based on specific characteristics including age.

“Based on the allegations in the complaint, it is plausible that the social media defendants’ role exceeded that of neutral assistance in promoting content, and constituted active identification of users who would be most impacted,” Goetz wrote in his ruling.

He said Nazario could pursue wrongful death, product liability and negligence claims against the social media firms, but dismissed her claims against New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority for failing to lock the car’s doors.

Zackery should have known subway surfing was dangerous due to common sense and “the realities of life in this city”, Goetz wrote in dismissing the MTA claim.

The MTA said subway surfing more than doubled around the time of Zackery Nazario’s death and cited the potential influence of social media at the time.

Targeted content

Following Zackery Nazario’s death his mother found many videos of subway surfing on his social media accounts, and discovered Zackery had received an ad for a ski mask, often worn by young people while engaging in the practice to hide their identities.

“Zackery was addicted to social media by design and affirmatively directed to challenge videos encouraging subway surfing,” said Nazario’s lawyer Matthew Bergman last year.

Bergman is the founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Centre, which is pursuing hundreds of similar claims against social media giants.

In 2023, when another teenaged boy was killed while subway surfing, TikTok said it had 40,000 safety professionals working to remove harmful content and said the practice predated its platform.