On yesterday’s Live, we were joined by Laura Marquez-Garrett, Amy Neville and Carole Cadwalladr, who discussed the Bloomberg Media’s acclaimed documentary ‘Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media’.
The film follows the Social Media Victims Law Center, a small legal outfit in the US, as it takes Big Tech firms to court for online harms, challenging Section 230 of the Telecommunication Act that gives these companies immunity from content posted on their sites by classifying them as platforms rather than publishers. The firm represents families around the country whose children have suffered grave consequences as a result of social media use; children dying by copying suicide videos on Instagram, and overdosing on drugs bought off dealers on Snapchat.
Laura is an attorney who is actively involved in efforts across the globe to force change and hold tech companies accountable for the harms they are causing children as a matter of intentional platform design, and Amy, a bereaved parent who set up the Alexander Neville Foundation (ANF) after the tragic loss of her 14-year-old son due to social media harms. Both feature in the documentary.
Can’t Look Away has been out in UK cinemas and on Jolt from 8 August.
Here is more on our guests:
Laura Marquez-Garrett is a 2002 Harvard Law School graduate and spent the first twenty-years of their career in Big Law, overseeing complex litigation matters and specializing in electronic evidence and forensic investigation. In January 2022, Laura joined the Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC) to contribute to the Center’s mission of change and holding tech companies accountable for the harms they are causing to children and families.
They have since been involved in filing more than 1,300 complaints against tech companies in state and federal courts across the country, including, in October 2024, the first complaint involving human-like AI harms to a child.
Amy Neville is the President of the Alexander Neville Foundation (ANF), an organization her family founded after the tragic loss of her 14-year-old son, Alexander. A drug dealer on Snapchat sold Alex a counterfeit pill made with illicit fentanyl that took his life. This unimaginable loss compelled Amy to confront the fentanyl crisis and the growing dangers of unregulated social media platforms.
Through ANF, Amy works closely with young people to co-create meaningful drug prevention and social media education programs. The foundation is rooted in youth collaboration and has become a guiding voice in efforts to curb substance misuse and reshape the digital environment for children and teens.
Her mission remains clear: to prevent more families from experiencing the devastation hers has endured and to ensure youth are protected both offline and online.
Carole Cadwalladr is a Pulitzer-nominated journalist and co-founder of the Citizens, a journalism and campaigning non-profit. She previously was a writer for The Guardian and The Observer, and can now be found on her Substack, How To Survive The Broligarchy.
