With tears in their eyes, families gathered in downtown Los Angeles Friday to place flowers before digital memorials honoring children they say were lost to social media harms, unveiling an installation just steps from a courthouse where a landmark trial is examining whether major platforms foster addiction among young users.
About 15 families assembled at Gloria Molina Grand Park, across from City Hall, to unveil the “Lost Screen Memorial,” an art installation featuring large-scale smartphone displays showing the faces and stories of 50 children whose deaths were linked by advocates to harms experienced on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.
The memorial was previously showcased during a private event in March 2025 with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle through their charitable organization, Archewell Philanthropies.
Now in Los Angeles, the installation was set to be on display through Friday afternoon.
Organizers said the memorial is intended to humanize victims by putting names and faces to stories often reduced to statistics and to serve as a symbol of the growing tech accountability movement.
Parents were joined by New York Times author Jonathan Haidt, founder of The Anxious Generation Movement; Sarah Gardner, CEO of the child-safety organization Heat Initiative; James Holt of Archewell Philanthropies; Shelby Knox, director of tech accountability campaigns at ParentsTogether Action; and Lennon Torres, youth LGBTQ+ advocate and campaign and programs manager at Heat Initiative.
“For the last decade, Big Tech has run the largest uncontrolled experiment in history on our children, saturating their lives with addictive technologies designed to capture their attention, intensify their emotions and fragment their connections,” Haidt said. “We are now seeing the human cost of that choice.”
Ellen Roome, of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire in the United Kingdom, said she traveled to Los Angeles to advocate for her son, Jools Sweeney, who died at age 14 in 2022, and to attend the ongoing civil trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
“Jools was the light of my life, the life of our family, and the lives of everyone who was fortunate enough to know him,” Roome said. “Since his light was taken from the world, we have been left completely in the dark by social media companies that have refused to provide me with even basic information about what happened.”
“But Jools is part of the Lost Screen Memorial, which is now just blocks from where the landmark social media trial in Los Angeles is taking place, and now his light can shine on all of the families who are closely watching the courtroom and demanding justice,” Roome added.
Roome is working to have her country’s legislators approve and adopt “Jools’ Law,” which would mandate that social media companies provide children’s data directly to parents without a court order.
California resident Toney Roberts, whose 14-year-old daughter Englyn died in 2020, said families are calling for stronger safety measures.
“Engyln was a beautiful, happy child, and we did everything we could as parents to keep her safe — but these technology companies designed their products to be more powerful than any parental controls we could put in place,” Roberts said.
“There are 50 beautiful faces in the `Lost Screen Memorial’ that represent our precious children, but the terrible reality is there are thousands more around the world who have died because of social media harms. We are fighting for change, accountability and justice because it doesn’t have to be this way, and we don’t want a single other family to experience the pain of losing their child,” Roberts added.
The group behind the memorial also held a protest Thursday outside Snap Inc.’s headquarters in Santa Monica, urging the company to remove addictive features, strengthen privacy protections for minors, implement age-verification measures and limit algorithms that promote harmful content, drugs and child sexual abuse.
In a statement to City News Service, Snap said it “unequivocally condemns the criminal conduct of the drug dealers whose actions led to these tragedies. Addressing the fentanyl crisis demands a united front, bringing together law enforcement, government officials, medical professionals, parents, educators, tech companies, and advocacy organizations.”
“We have long recognized the urgency of this issue and have devoted substantial resources to combating illegal activity on our platform, including decisive action against drug dealers,” the company added.
Snap said it has invested in safety measures to protect minors, including enhanced privacy features, age-specific safeguards for users ages 13 to 17, bidirectional messaging restrictions and the removal of users under age 13. The company said it also maintains 24/7 teams to support law enforcement investigations.
The civil trial underway this week focuses on Meta — the parent company of Instagram and Facebook — and Google-owned YouTube. The remaining defendants face claims by a now-20-year-old plaintiff identified as K.G.M., who alleges social media use beginning in childhood fostered addiction and worsened depression and suicidal thoughts.
The plaintiff previously reached settlements with Snapchat and TikTok.
The case is being closely watched as a potential test for hundreds of similar lawsuits alleging that social media companies use algorithms designed to exploit human psychology.
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri testified Wednesday that heavy use of a platform does not necessarily constitute addiction and said protecting minors aligns with business interests.
Meta co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify Feb. 18, followed by YouTube CEO Neil Mohan.
Social media companies are shielded by a 1996 law, known as Section 230, which provides protections for Internet publishers from liability for user content. The issue is further complicated by the First Amendment, which provides protections for speech.