Zürcher Nachrichten - 'Downward spiral': French mother blames social media for teen's suicide

Emmanuelle Pouedras told AFP her story as France mulls scaling back social media access for teens, including through a possible ban for children under 15 similar to the one in Australia.

Clement had only just started his second year of secondary school when he jumped off a bridge in the northwestern region of Brittany in 2024.

His mother, a 55-year-old shopkeeper, and her husband, Sebastien, are now seeking to reopen the investigation into his death and hold social media platforms to account.

In September, they filed a complaint against TikTok and Meta among other such companies on charges including incitement to suicide.

The vast majority of the videos on his TikTok "For You" page -- where the platform's algorithm recommends content -- were "inciting him to death, telling him he doesn't matter to anyone", Clement's mother told AFP at home in the town of Lorient.

The self-harm content "exacerbated" her son's distress and sent him into a "downward spiral", she said.

"TikTok knew he wasn't doing well, TikTok did nothing, and TikTok is not helping us find the truth," she said, accusing the platform of failing to act.

Her son was also cyberbullied on the messaging service WhatsApp right up until the last hours before his death, she told AFP.

Pouedras was on Wednesday to meet French President Emmanuel Macron in the town of Saint-Malo, also in Brittany, where he was to discuss the challenge that social media and their algorithms pose to democracy.

In a letter she sent to the president on Monday, she described her son as "yet another victim of social media".

- 'Incitement' to death -

Before Clement died, Pouedras said she was wary of the potential harm posed by unfettered access to smartphones and required her two children to keep theirs out of their bedrooms at night.

During the investigation into Clement's death, police did not examine his phone but she later found messages indicating he had been cyberbullied.

"Have you finished your shitty suicide?" read one text sent in a group chat on the messaging service WhatsApp.

She said she spent months trying to contact social media platforms, including Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, to gain access to his data to try to understand what led to his death.

But she received only partial responses, despite platforms being required to give her access to this data, according to France's data protection authority CNIL, she told AFP.

The family filed a complaint on September 19, their lawyer Pierre Debuisson accusing the platforms of "deliberate obstruction". He argued that social media sites were the scene of a wave of "multiple incitements to suicide, accessible to minors without any protective filter".

The regional public prosecutor's office did not say what action it would take in response to the Pouedras' complaint.

TikTok told AFP it "strictly prohibits content that depicts or promotes suicide or self-harm" and "removes 98 percent of violating content before it is even reported".

Searches containing terms such as "suicide" are redirected to "a page with dedicated resources", it added.

Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, did not immediately respond to AFP's request for comment.

- World first crackdown -

There is a growing global push to address the impact of social media on young people's mental health.

In September, a French parliamentary commission probing the psychological effects of TikTok recommended banning social media for children under 15 and adopting a "digital curfew" for 15- to 18-year-olds.

The commission was launched in March, after seven families sued TikTok in late 2024, accusing them of having exposed their children to content that could push them to suicide.

Macron in recent weeks has urged stricter oversight of social media and their algorithms, describing it as the "Wild West".

In a world first, Australia on Wednesday banned under-16s from social media, declaring it was time to "take back control" from formidable tech giants.

New Zealand and Malaysia are mulling similar restrictions.

YouTube, Meta and other social media giants have lined up to condemn the ban.

R.Bernasconi--NZN