Andrea Silvano still vividly recalls the last words her son Zachary said to her before he tragically and unexpectedly died at the age of 21.
“The night before he passed away, he came into my room and kissed me goodnight, and said, ‘I love you, Mama. I’ll see you in the morning,’” Silvano told the San Fernando Valley Sun/el Sol. What she didn’t realize that evening is that Zachary had connected with a drug dealer via Snapchat and bought a pill that he thought was Percocet – but it turned out to be fentanyl.
“He only took a quarter of that one pill and it took him – he was gone,” she said, quietly holding back tears. “I found him the next morning.”
Silvano traveled from Boston, Massachusetts, to meet with over a dozen other grieving parents who experienced the same unimaginable loss. They gathered at Gloria Molina Grand Park in Downtown Los Angeles, one block from the courthouse where a trial against big tech companies is currently underway, alleging that addictive media apps harmed a young woman’s mental health.
The trial against Meta and YouTube brings together 24 “bellwether” cases from more than 2,000 cases that are pending statewide against Google, Meta, TikTok and Snapchat. A verdict against Meta and YouTube could impact how similar lawsuits are resolved in the future, potentially forcing the companies to change their platforms and pay out billions of dollars in damages.
At the park, the parent group unveiled the “Lost Screen Memorial,” an art installation of 50 large-scale smartphones, each featuring a photo of a teenager or young adult who lost their life, the parents contend, due to using social media platforms and other online apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok.
Launched in 2025, the screen memorial was spearheaded by Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, via their non-profit organization Archewell Philanthropies. Above each photo in the memorial is the young person’s date of birth and the date they died.
Some of the deceased children had experienced malicious cyberbullying or sextortion, leading to depression and eventually suicide; others participated in popular online challenges, such as the choking game, resulting in their deaths; and several, like Zachary, died of fentanyl poisoning after purchasing what they thought was Percocet or Adderall from drug dealers they met via social media apps.
“This memorial is a tribute to the children we’ve lost and an urgent reminder that we cannot wait any longer for Big Tech to do the right thing,” said Sarah Gardner, CEO of Heat Initiative, a child safety organization. “I’ve witnessed these parents do everything imaginable to honor their children’s memory and turn their grief into a movement for change.
“They’ve testified before Congress,” she continued, “filed lawsuits … and stood outside corporate offices demanding accountability, including … in front of Snapchat headquarters.”
Last Thursday, Silvano was one of 43 parents and family members who painted the names of their deceased children on the street outside the Snapchat offices in Santa Monica. Bridgette Norring from Hastings, Minnesota was also there. Her son Devin lost his life on April 4, 2020, from fentanyl poisoning.
Norring is angered by Snapchat’s “complete lack of accountability” regarding the claim that dealers are utilizing their platform to sell and distribute deadly drugs to social media users.
“There has been no admission of guilt or anything; we didn’t get any justice in our son’s death,” she said. Norring and other survivor parents met with Snapchat executives in the spring of 2021. Norring said that during that meeting, Jennifer Park Stout, vice president of Global Public Policy at Snap Inc., told them they couldn’t sue Snapchat “because of Section 230” – a 1996 federal law that protects tech companies from being held legally responsible for content posted by users.
“They said, ‘You should have been watching your kid, monitoring your children better on social media,’” said Norring.
“The social media companies are telling us, ‘Well, he shouldn’t have been on there trying to buy [drugs] – but kids experiment,” said Silvano. “He didn’t want to die. One bad decision cost him his life. … But these dealers are finding [and targeting] these kids – that’s the problem. … [They] deliver drugs to them like a pizza, like an Uber, and we’ve had enough. Children are dying.”
Silvano believes one of the features that facilitates dangerous abuses of social media apps is “disappearing messages,” a privacy function that automatically deletes texts, photos and videos.
“The disappearing messages are how drug dealers can push these pills and then vanish,” she said.
Norring said she hopes the lawsuit her family filed against Snapchat will “help change things.”
“But even if we don’t get a win out of it, at least we brought the subject out of the darkness and into the light,” she said. “Everything that we learned about this crisis, we learned after it was too late. We had no idea about fentanyl; we had no idea the role that these apps play in these children’s deaths. It’s too late for us, but it’s our mission as parents to help educate others.”