CNN) — About two weeks after his oldest son’s funeral, South Carolina state house Rep. Brandon Guffey says he received a private Instagram message with a laughing emoji.
Gavin Guffey, 17, had fatally shot himself in a bathroom in July 2022, and the grieving father was searching for clues on what led to his suicide.
Then Guffey and his younger son began to get messages demanding money in exchange for nude photos of his late son. Anyone on Gavin’s Instagram followers list who had the last name Guffey got similar messages, his father says.
The family began piecing together Gavin’s last moments and discovered he had encountered a scammer on Instagram and unwittingly became a victim of sexual extortion, a crime the FBI warns is increasingly targeting underage boys and leading to an alarming increase in suicides nationwide.
Now Guffey is suing Instagram’s parent company, Meta, for wrongful death, gross negligence and other claims, saying it does not do enough to protect children like Gavin from online predators.
The lawsuit, filed in South Carolina state court last week, accuses Meta’s social media platforms of causing a range of problems in children, including depression, low self-esteem, anxiety and eating disorders. It alleges that Meta uses algorithms to aggressively target adolescents and does not do enough to keep them safe from harm……
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/30/us/rep-brandon-guffey-instagram-lawsuit-cec?cid=ios_app