Two families sue Meta after suicide of teen 'sextortion' victim on Instagram

Two families - one in the United States and one in Scotland - have filed a lawsuit against Meta, the company that owns Instagram, accusing it of grave negligence and of having ignored for years a known pattern of sexual blackmail (sextortion) that has led to the deaths of teenage boys.

The lawsuit, filed this week in a state court in Delaware, alleges that Instagram allowed and facilitated contact between minors and adult predators, despite having inside information warning of the lethal risk of these practices.

The case was initially revealed by NBC News, in an investigation signed by journalist David Ingram, and supported by court documents, FBI alerts and data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

"This was no accident"

The victims are 13-year-old Levi Maciejewski from Pennsylvania and 16-year-old Murray Dowey from Dunblane, Scotland.

According to the lawsuit, Levi joined Instagram on Sunday. Less than 48 hours later, after being contacted by a stranger feigning romantic interest, he was the victim of sextortion: he was asked for intimate images and then threatened to spread them to friends and family if he didn't pay. He died Tuesday afternoon.

Murray, described by his family as "the glue" in the household, had been using Instagram for years when he received a similar message that, according to the lawsuit, plunged him into a spiral of fear and shame that ended in suicide.

"This was known. It was not a coincidence. It was a foreseeable consequence of deliberate decisions by Meta," said Matthew Bergman, lead attorney for the families and founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center, in remarks picked up by NBC News.

A threat documented by the FBI

Sextortion is a rapidly growing crime. According to the FBI, thousands of minors have been victims of these schemes in recent years, many of them operated from West Africa and Southeast Asia.

NCMEC has documented at least 36 teen suicides linked directly to financial sextortion.

The mechanics are recurrent: initial contact on social media, request for intimate images, threats, demands for money and, in many cases, an immediate psychological breakdown of the victim.

Internal documents under the microscope

Lawyers for the families plan to use internal Meta corporate records, arising in other U.S. litigation, that would show internal debates from at least 2019 about making teenage accounts private by default.

According to the lawsuit, legal and wellness teams defended that move, while the growth team opposed it for fear of losing interaction and users.

One of the data cited is particularly telling: a private default setting would have eliminated 5.4 million unwanted interactions daily in direct messages.

Meta responds, but doesn't get into the background

In a statement, Meta called the sextortion "a heinous crime" and assured that it collaborates with law enforcement and implements prevention measures, such as blurring sensitive images and limiting suspicious contacts.

It did not respond directly to the allegations in the lawsuit.

The case comes against a backdrop of growing political and social pressure on major technology platforms. In 2024, Mark Zuckerberg apologized to parents at a U.S. Senate hearing on online child safety. This month, Australia became the first country to ban social media sites for children under 16.

For the families of Levi Maciejewski and Murray Dowey, the reforms come too late. So too for the loved ones of so many others.