My daughter, , would have turned 23 this year. Becca was a beautiful, caring person whose smile lit up every room. She had hopes and dreams of her own, but before she was able to begin her first year at the University of Richmond, Becca died after she ingested fentanyl-laced drugs at the age of 18.
Fentanyl may have been the official cause of her death, but the path she went down to get there was paved by social media. Like many young people at the time, Becca got her first smartphone in middle school. Three years before her death, she was added to an online party chat where she was introduced to a group of 18-year-old boys – one of whom later raped her.
She was 15. As she attempted to heal from this trauma, the process was undermined by a humiliating cyberbullying incident. The shame and anguish the assault caused – compounded by the cruelty of a few peers on multiple social media platforms – created a hole inside her heart that Becca tried to fill by self-medicating.
Becca had a loving family and the support of counselors, but social media made it possible for her to find illicit drugs whenever she felt the desire to escape from the pain she felt inside. My daughter’s story is singular, but her experience with social media is one that millions of kids face daily. What’s frightening is that when a child experiences online harm, it is often because social media is working exactly as designed.
Platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and designed to maximize time spent on .