Snapchat's Deadly Failure (with Aaron Ping)

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Snapchat's Deadly Failure"

Podcast: Scrolling 2 Death
Host: Nicki Petrossi
Guest: Aaron Ping
Date: March 23, 2025

---

Main Theme

This episode features a deeply personal and urgent conversation between host Nicki Petrossi and guest Aaron Ping, whose son Avery died after obtaining drugs through Snapchat. The discussion centers on the dangers of social media platforms—especially Snapchat—for teens, the failures in safeguarding youth, and the systemic issues that allow illicit activity and tragedy to continue. The episode serves as a stark warning for parents and calls for legislative and cultural change.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Remembering Avery (00:26–03:24)

• Avery’s Character: Aaron describes Avery as empathetic and caring, with a “superpower” for noticing and supporting those who were struggling (00:26). Avery dreamed of being a psychologist and was interested in helping people, even as a teen.
• The Tragedy: Avery became curious about MDMA after consuming YouTube videos on its use in therapy for PTSD, which led him to seek it out online. Tragically, this search ended with his death after purchasing drugs through Snapchat (02:57).

"He had a superpower for kind of sensing who in the room was kind of struggling... it was like his dream was to become a psychologist." —Aaron Ping [00:26]

---

2. The Path to Social Media—Parental Hesitation and Pressure (03:24–08:34)

• Delayed Social Media Access: Aaron only allowed Avery to join social media at age 15, specifically Snapchat, due to the intense peer pressure to avoid social isolation (03:31–03:50).
• Dangers Unknown: Despite parental controls and investment in low-tech education at Waldorf School, Aaron was shocked by how easily kids can access dangerous content and individuals online (03:50–07:10).
• Social Pressure: Nicki acknowledges most parents eventually acquiesce to Snapchat because their teens are otherwise ostracized socially (07:10).

“He said, I can't survive socially in high school without this. This is what all the kids are using.” —Aaron Ping [03:50]

---

3. Educational Culture, Impulse Control, and Tech's Effects (08:34–12:19)

• Need for Individualized Attention: Aaron highlights alternative education models that teach cause and effect, routine, and delayed gratification—skills hampered by screen-based education and social media.
• Dopamine and Screen Time: Nicki warns that mainstream school systems are setting kids up for “dopamine-driven” behavior with educational tech starting at age 4, dulling interest in real-life activities (11:19).

“They're just being trained to get dopamine from educational games...damaging their dopamine receptors.” —Nicki Petrossi [11:19]

---

4. Snapchat as a Platform for Drug Dealers—Corporate Negligence (12:19–21:38)

• Ongoing Dealer Access: Aaron reveals the drug dealer who sold Avery the fatal drug was already known to local authorities, had been subpoenaed by the narcotics task force, yet Snapchat failed to remove or block him (12:19–14:00).
• Delayed (or Ignored) Responses: Snapchat often waits 30–40 days to respond to warrants, enabling evidence deletion. Aaron speculates whether this is intentional (15:00–16:16).
• Lack of Accountability: Both Aaron and Nicki express outrage at Snapchat’s lack of substantive action and call for a whistleblower to expose internal practices (16:17–17:17).

“It’s disgusting to me that Snapchat has been accused of causing over 70% of teen fentanyl overdoses. Those drugs came from dealers that sold it to them on Snapchat.” —Aaron Ping [13:09]

“They really don't care. They do not care about kids using their platform. And I hope every single parent out there hears this.” —Aaron Ping [19:01]

---

5. The Systematic Failure—Legal, Policing, and Parental Challenges (21:38–29:22)

• Justice System Gaps: After Avery’s death, Aaron had to advocate for higher bail and push investigators to collect evidence. The drug dealer was released on low bail despite serious charges, possibly continuing illicit activity (23:27–24:28).
• Lack of Transparency: Drug dealers frequently ignore questions about the safety of drugs (25:01). Critical evidence, such as Snapchat messages, often disappears due to delayed law enforcement access.
• Parental Advice: Nicki stresses parents should know their children’s device passwords, take immediate action to access and record messages if the worst happens, and not rely on platforms to provide data (26:20–27:34).
• Vaping as a Gateway: Vapes, often seen as innocuous, are described as the starting point for many teens buying drugs from online dealers (28:47–29:22).

“They know way more than they let on. They're very invasive for marketing purposes. They could tell potentially everybody this guy ever contacted.” —Aaron Ping [27:34]

---

6. Recommendations for Parents (29:59–35:42)

• Focus on Structure: Aaron insists parents should focus on what they can control: creating structured, loving, balanced environments, and routines (29:59).
• Challenges in Split Households: Consistent boundaries are hard when parents are separated and don’t agree on tech privileges.
• Monitoring Tactics: Aaron suggests, as his sister does, parents should consider making their own accounts to monitor their children’s Snapchat activity. Nicki expands: parents should personally test any platform before allowing their child on it (34:42–35:42).

"Don’t even trick yourself for a second that you do [control over devices], because kids will outsmart you with them... Prioritize giving your children a good, structured, balanced, loving life." —Aaron Ping [29:59]

---

7. Legislative Action and Hope for Change (38:22–41:49)

• Colorado Bill 86: Aaron testifies in support of a bill requiring social media companies to respond to warrants within 72 hours, with penalties for noncompliance. He argues fines should be substantial to incentivize cooperation (38:22–41:46).
• Call to Action: Nicki encourages listeners to support similar legislation in their states and to contact representatives. She emphasizes that parental advocacy is necessary to effect change (40:35–41:49).

"If you're not going to run your company ethically, that's exactly what you deserve." —Aaron Ping [40:17]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It really shocked me to find out what is actually on there… I had some ignorance, a few things.” —Aaron Ping [03:50]
• “You gave Snapchat because…kids are being left out and ostracized. That's a really horrible spot to be for a teenager.” —Nicki Petrossi [07:10]
• “Every single pill sold on social media has fentanyl in it. It’s just a question of how lethal is it?” —Nicki Petrossi (citing the DEA) [17:27]
• “Don’t even trick yourself for a second that you do [have control over devices]... kids will outsmart you with them.” —Aaron Ping [29:59]
• “Vapes are worse than smoking…all good stuff to talk to your kids about…” —Aaron Ping [37:58]
• “These type of things can happen in any family, in any state, in any country… we need to hold social media companies accountable and force them to make safer choices regarding our children.” —Nicki Petrossi [41:49]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introducing Avery & His Story: [00:26–03:24]
• Granting Snapchat Access/Parental Struggles: [03:24–08:34]
• On Education and Dopamine: [08:34–12:19]
• How Snapchat Enables Drug Dealing: [12:19–21:38]
• Justice System Failures/Parental Advice: [21:38–29:22]
• Parenting Recommendations & Monitoring: [29:59–35:42]
• Fentanyl in Vapes & Recent Studies: [36:51–38:22]
• Legislation & Call to Action: [38:22–41:49]

---

Final Thoughts

This emotional episode is a potent call for parental vigilance, systemic reform, and legislative change. The raw, firsthand experience of Aaron Ping spotlights the devastating real-world consequences of social media companies’ inadequate protections and slow responses to illicit activity. Listeners are left with actionable advice for home and community, along with a strong urge to advocate for accountability and reform at state and national levels.

If you’re a parent, educator, or policymaker, this episode is essential listening—and a powerful motivator to push for a safer digital environment for children.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. So, Erin, thank you for doing this with me today. We got connected through Laura Marquez Garrett, who is an attorney at the Social Media Victims Law Center. So let's. Let's start, though, getting to know your son, Avery. If you can just back up and tell us anything you want to tell us about him, any stories you want to share. I just love to get to know him.

[B]

I mean, he was the sweetest guy. He. He had a superpower for kind of sensing who in the room was kind of struggling a little bit in his various services that we. We had through two different households in different places around the country. The reoccurring theme amongst all these kids was that, like, he would find them on, you know, a day when they were feeling down and. And make them feel good. He just checked just by checking in and sharing a smile, maybe a little joke, you know, some. There was a girl in Olympia at the Olympia High School who was sitting by herself all the time. And, you know, at lunchtime, and she said that he would leave his group of friends just to go sit with her, and it made her feel really good. And there was a guy in New York who had just got into his school out there this past fall. He was new military family, always moved around a lot. Didn't know anyone at the school. He didn't think anyone at the school knew his name. And Avery one day just went right up to him and said, hey, Brady, how are you doing today? And he said that it really helped him. And those stories just went on and on. They had a memorial in this school. They expected it to go an hour and ended up going all morning long with just all these different kids and different grades, too. It wasn't like he only stuck to his own age group. He would really just want to help anyone. And so it was like his dream was to become a psychologist. Is in, like this past time I saw him, that's what he was talking about a lot. And I think he would have made a really good one. I think this whole searching out MDMA is also from that. He had been reading and getting fed YouTube videos of all things about all these studies in MDMA and how it, you know, people on SSRIs who had PTSD do this one controlled study, and all of a sudden, you know, this one medication works for a long time, whereas, you know, I. To take SSRIs with all these negative side effects for years and like, that sort of thing. So I think that's what spurred his interest to search out that online. And unfortunately, it resulted in him dying in December, a couple days before Christmas.

[A]

So Avery was active on Snapchat, and you knew about that, right?

[B]

Yes, I did not. So social media in general was something that he only got access to in the. In the. Within a year of this happening? Um, yeah, it was something I. 15.

[A]

Yeah, around 15. Wow. Yeah, that's. That's late and that's smart.

[B]

Yeah, I. I mean, I had an awareness about, you know, some of the dangers. Um, I'll just say not nearly as much as I've learned in the past two months, which is more than I learned in eight years of college. I think it really shocked me to find out what is actually on there. I hadn't been on my Facebook in 10 years. I hadn't been on my LinkedIn in 10 years, and those are the only two I use. So I. There was really no way for me to know that, like, kids are getting fed advertisements for drugs and money scams and all this other stuff on there that paid ads like that, you know, Meta and all these other companies. I'm sure your listeners are already well aware of this stuff. I had read the Anxious Generation when that book came out. I had always sort of been wary about screens. I had invested in most of Avery's schooling. You went to Waldorf School with the whole normalization about screens being really one of the main reasons to make that decision for him. It was shocking to find out that all this time setting parental controls and restrictions in the Apple settings, that there are these apps that the reason Avery actually convinced me finally to let him use Snapchat was 10th grade. He said, I can't survive socially in high school without this. This is what all the kids are using to communicate. And I just need this to be able to talk to friends and, you know, be part of these group chats. And he was doing really well, you know, taking things, you know, seriously. And I think I feel like. And also Waldorf School. One of the things that Waldorf School does get right is that kids develop at different paces. Right. And sometimes they just take a little bit of extra time. So I do think that Avery had some propensity for impulse. Impulse control. You know, kids have to learn certain stages of development, and sometimes impulse control is something that isn't mastered in early childhood, and, you know, a lot of times, not really even by late adulthood. And to. To be giving kids access to, you know, instant gratification of any sort. It's, you know, the Internet, and it's certainly something that you want to see. Your. Your child Kind of mastering before they have access to that. And so that was, I think, in Avery's case, just one of those things that I was aware of and hesitant about to give him that unlimited access. I never really thought I was giving him unlimited access because of parental restrictions and yada, yada, yada. Just unfortunately, I had some ignorance, a few things.

[A]

So Waldorf, I love their program. I have an interview with one of their administrators because lots of parents look for alternative schools, especially ones that are lower tech, and so highly recommend parents just look into that program. And funny enough, it's where a lot of the tech executives have been sending their schools for the past decade or so and not giving their kids their own technology, but impulse control is. So my son struggles with that, for sure. And he's only 7. And I can just see him when I hear. When I talk to parents who've lost kids, particularly due to, like, choking challenges or something, I just see my son, and I think if he saw something that looked like fun like that or looked like it could get him some attention, he's. He would be all over that kind of thing. And I can't allow him access to something that exposes him to something that could be deadly. But I'm lucky that I know this now early. And you kind of. You gave Snapchat because of what all parents. In all the surveys, parents give Snapchat because their kids are being left out and ostracized. And that's a really horrible, horrible feeling and a really horrible spot to be for a teenager who all they want to do is start to separate from their family unit and start to fit in with their peers. And they can't. They cannot if they're not online.

[B]

It's. Part of it is this problem with our mono. Like, I think of it as, like, monoculture, right? Where, you know, grade one, grade two, grade two. And that is, you know, going back to Waldorf. And what I appreciate about the recognition is that, you know, there's a. I think a lot of mental illness is a result of not paying more attention to the individual as they kind of come up through different challenges that everyone's gonna be facing. Yeah, there's an interesting. Just with autism as an example, there's an interesting school outside of Boston that does work with autistic patients. And a lot of it is going back to, like, the basic basics of, like, crawling and doing, like, you know, moving as if you're a baby, as if you're a toddler, like, rolling over and things like that. And part of their theory is that, you know, sometimes kids are put into maybe like a bouncer. They don't learn cause and effect of certain things. And I think cause and effect is a big part of it in, in a lot of development where kids may not fully grasp the sense of like I'm going to do this and then this is going to happen. And anyway, that school, I think they've, they've actually graduated somebody that was, you know, had autism to the effect that they couldn't really like communicate prior to going to it. And then they went out and like started their own school. That's what I heard. And there's another example of this in A friend of my dad's in England started a school called Ruskin Mill and it's working with troubled youth, people that would be in juvie, right. And they've seen a like 95% success rate of people not getting re incarcerated as opposed to like, you know, it's like something like 30% at a straight up regular tubing England. And it, their whole philosophy is just that like they, they like farm their own food, build their own tools to work on the farm. And like, you know, the metaphor that I heard use was, you know, they're metalsmithing like a hammer, right? And so that really every stroke they're getting, they're learning cause and effect and just enforcing those for kids and just giving them the chance to have balance and routine which a lot of times in our world is not so easily

[A]

accessible and like delayed gratification and avoiding the like quick dopamine hits of all this screen based childhood stuff. And in the regular school programs they're using these iPads or Chromebooks starting in literally TK at 4 years old. And kids are just being trained to get dopamine from educational games, if that's even a phrase we can use. And what that's doing is damaging their dopamine receptors. And then they're no longer excited by anything and everything is boring in real life. So instead how about we get kids outside working on hard projects with their hands like delaying that gratification instead of giving them virtual rewards and trophies. Um, and so this is something I, I could talk about all day is the education program.

[B]

But it is important to give some, you know, strength and strong, strong tools in the beginning. You know, when we are gonna hand our kids screens and stuff like that.

[A]

It's yeah, balance and delaying. And that's what you did. And you, you thought it would be safe enough. And so, you know, I wrote, I read something that you wrote. Social media platforms have become the perfect delivery system for this increasingly lethal supply of fe. The dealer who killed Avery was well known to local authorities. The narcotics task force had subpoenaed his Snapchat records just two months before Avery's death. But like so many other parents, we found ourselves up against a system designed to shield dealers rather than save lives. Can you just talk about that a little bit more? And it's. It's hard to understand that, like, Snapchat knows that this is a drug dealer because they've already been subpoenaed for his records, and then they let him continue using Snapchat and selling drugs on Snapchat. Is that what I'm reading?

[B]

Yeah. I am going to be talking about this a lot, and I'm glad that we are talking about it, because it's disgusting to me that Snapchat has been accused of causing over 70% of teen fentanyl overdoses. Those drugs came from dealers that sold it to them on Snapchat. This guy in this case, if you look at the evidence that they got at his house, it was multiple carloads of stuff that came out of there. It's all vapes. Like nicotine vapes, pot vapes. And we're in Washington state, so, I mean, these are not intended for adults. This is. He set up primarily targeting kids because

[A]

adults just go to the store to get them.

[B]

Middle schoolers and high schoolers, the entire district in our area, yeah, adults can just go to the store and, you know, all. It's all teen drugs, all. Everything in the. In the arsenal that they pulled from there. And if I was a business running things ethically, and I had any care about the people, the kids, the 20 million kids in America on Snapchat, I believe it's pretty close to that. I would be responding to police warrants quickly, as quickly as I possibly can. But what I heard in Colorado was a district attorney testifying that it's regular, that they don't respond at all, or that when they do respond, when you finally get a response, it's like 30 days, you know, 40 days later. Given a platform like Snapchat, that's plenty of time for evidence to fall out. So, hypothetically speaking, you know, one of these adult dealers dealing to kids, maybe they're trading and. And this happens on it, too. They're trading pictures with high school girls for vapes, right? Say there's somebody at Snapchat, they get this warrant, they look at it, and they're like, oh, this makes us look Pretty bad, right? Let's wait for this to fall off and then we'll respond. I mean, do we not know that they're doing that? I want to find that out. I don't know how I'm going to find that out. But what we need is a whistleblower to understand so that we, as a general public, as parents, have lost their kids, can understand what those workings are when it. Why are they deciding to respond to some warrants quickly? Why do they wait a long time on others? Because it is all going to delete off of their back end in a certain amount of time. Are they waiting for that? I do want to know. I don't know what to do. Like, do we geofence all the Snapchat offices and send ads to all the employees saying, hey, look, this is going on. My kid died because of this?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Can you give me some answers, please?

[A]

I have been watching Snapchat very closely now for about a year and a half and been very close with families who've lost children to a Snapchat drug dealer back in like 2020. And so this has been happening for a long time. They've been well aware and they have not done anything that I've seen to actually protect kids from this continuing to happen. They are bas like a PR conglomerate. Like, they can get these things shut down. They know when the new Rolling Stone expose is coming out and they're going to do PR control over that. Like they do a good job drowning out the bad stuff with what the good stuff. That they're. The good stuff in quotes that they're doing to protect kids. Yeah, I have seen no real protections added. And look, we still have children dying and these.

[B]

We need a whistleblower. I mean, that would be the most. That would be the most direct and best way to fix this situation. So if you listen to this podcast

[A]

and work at Snapchat, Yeah, no one has come out for Snapchat. We have meta whistleblowers and things like that. But. And there's more coming on meta's side. And the. I mean, I just can't get past the fact that these drug dealers, they're not just killing one child, they're selling fentanyl pills and fentanyl laced vapes and things to multiple children. And, you know, I interviewed the head of the DEA in New York and he told me when it comes to pills, every single pill sold on social media has fentanyl in it. It's just a question of how lethal is it? And he said about five out of 10 of the pills that they seize have a lethal dose of fentanyl, leaving these drug dealers up on Snapchat, allowing them to be, continue to be active. And sometimes they'll just delete one account and create a new one on the same device. Well, guess what? Snapchat saves device id. So they know that it's that same person using the same device to create just a new account. And they know that device ID is linked to a drug dealer. So there's a lot they could do and they're not doing. And I'm on board for exposing in any way possible this lawsuit. Nettle vs Snap in LA in California is moving forward and I'm hopeful that will get to discovery soon and get to see actually what they have known and why they're not answering these subpoenas more quickly. It does make you wonder, are they just letting it disappear so that it's not on them?

[B]

It definitely appears that way to me. You know, with this, this case, they had two months to take this guy's account down. Right after being alerted by a narcotics task force that it was a drug dealer. They took a long time to get the evidence to the police. When they finally did get it to them, they sent a encrypted file that the narcotics task force detective didn't know how to open and had to get a specialist to open. It took him. It ended up extending almost two more weeks getting access to that. So no, no confirmation of receipt from police. No confirmation when the police send a follow up and then they just send a file with no instructions on how to open it. They really don't care. They do not care about kids using their platform. And I hope every single parent out there hears this. It's. It's disgusting. That really is.

[A]

And that is the platform that I don't, I don't know the exact percentage, but almost all children use to communicate with each other. Teenagers, I'll say 20 million kids.

[B]

That's what I read. I mean that's a lot.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That you are partially responsible for. Because anything happening on there, you're doing it behind parents backs and then you're deleting evidence off of it. It's not okay. It makes me very upset.

[A]

Yeah, no, I understand. Without Snapchat, do you think Avery would still be here today?

[B]

Yeah, I think without that dealer on the streets, I think he'd still be here today. Yeah, I think that would have. That was such a normalized thing in our community that like all the kids knew about, had something cracked down. Had the investigation into them been successful, which they almost were, Even with a 30 day delay in getting access to the evidence and not all the evidence that they were initially even trying to get because it all deleted or most of it probably deleted in that time. Yeah, I definitely think Avery would be here today. It would have said to the community like, look, this is what's been going on. You know, kids might wake up, some kids make them feel a little bit more hesitant about the. How it's just, you know, the, the normalization of using social media as a, a way to experiment and you know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Be impulsive.

[A]

So there's an investigation going on now. Has the drug dealer now been arrested?

[B]

He was arrested. I know. And another thing I did want to talk about, two parents that may find themselves in our situation is that he, we get to be incredibly proactive. I am very blessed to be friends with a former prosecutor, former head prosecutor in our area. And she said, you know, that day after I had driven through the night, you know, finding out this news just crushed. I don't even remember most of the day. But she said, you've got to collect any evidence that you can go get his phone, bring it to the police yet. You know, luckily we were able to pull through and do that. The police were not coming to the scene of the crime to collect evidence. They were not looking for it. So I do believe that like so many other parents that probably don't have the answers and can't tie things back to a social media dealer, like we were able to get those. So we handed that to them. The prosecutor's office recommended a very low bail, which I was upset about. And I went into the pre sentencing trial and I tried to advocate for a higher bail. The bail for a homicide charge in Washington state in this case was set at $50,000. That's low. That's like what other states had for low level offenders like 30 years ago.

[A]

So like, and get a bail bondsman and like pay a very small percentage out of pocket.

[B]

Yes, yeah, 10%. So there were, there were other charges because the guy's got, he has guns, he's not supposed to have guns and all that kind of stuff. But. And so it all added up to more. But specifically looking at just the homicide drug homicide charge, like for killing somebody, a $50,000 bail is the same as a low level possession charge for a non lethal amount would have had like 30 years ago in a state like New York state which had the Rockefeller drug laws. And I mean not saying that that's necessarily the correct picture of justice, but this is certainly not the correct picture of justice would happen here. And, you know, I'm still upset about it because then, you know, this guy who's super well established, turned around and paid off the bail the very next day and, you know, continued probably selling

[A]

drugs to children on Snapchat.

[B]

Well, now that I'm not going to be alleging, hopefully he's. He's doing his best to clean up his act. I don't. I don't know. But, you know, then that would get me in some legal trouble. But I don't. I do not believe that he should be out right now. I do think that he was a. A danger to the community. And, And. And kids.

[A]

Didn't. Didn't Avery, like, ask about the lethality or the, the strength of the drug he was sold, and he didn't get a response from the drug dealer, Is that right?

[B]

That's right, yeah. In the, in the Snapchat log that the police recovered off of the phone, um, he asked, you know, how many hits is that? How many, you know, how many doses? Cause he's trying to figure out how to do it safely. Crickets. No. No response. Doesn't, you know, clearly this is a kid that's no drug expert and is trying to figure out how to do it safely and just ignoring that. It's.

[A]

Yeah, well, because I assume the drug dealer knows that there's fentanyl in the drugs he's selling.

[B]

I would assume. I would. I would assume. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So that's an ongoing investigation. What. Where is it at now? Like, is it going to be a while before there's any trial or anything like that.

[B]

Yeah, it's nothing like a court drama. Like, I've. The only kind of court stuff I've ever experienced. Just, it's kind of like, hurry up and wait and delay. And we just saw a delay. I think originally the trial was set for April. Now it's up for June, July.

[A]

I appreciate the message to parents about anything happens to your kid, you get the devices, get them unlocked. A lot of parents can't get into the device because they don't know the four code password on the iPad or the iPhone. Know your kid's password. And I mean, I would almost. You're so not supposed to tamper with it, but you hand it over to law enforcement without saving them for, like, get some screenshots yourself maybe, before you hand it over. Because how long is it going to take the investigators to get the disappearing messages from Snapchat then they're gone, and they're not accessible. I just interviewed four families from the UK who lost their children to the choking challenge, and TikTok won't give any data over. TikTok doesn't even admit that the kids had accounts, and some of them had multiple accounts on TikTok, and so there's a lawsuit going on there. But the parents didn't realize in the moment that. That I think all of them like, that I should look at the phone, because how did my kid. Why would my kid do something like this? Where did they learn about it? Did the out. Did the algorithm serve it to them over and over and over until they thought it was safe to try? Probably, but we. We don't know until we have that data.

[B]

All this. I mean, stuff about. Oh, we don't know. We're protecting people's privacy. They know way more than they let on. You know, they're very invasive for marketing purposes. They could tell. They could tell potentially everybody this guy ever contacted or had contact with. I don't know why that's not something that, you know, law enforcement seems to be more strategic about getting and then following up on. I mean, I think it's important for law enforcement when they have these cases come up to expose them, because these dudes are setting up all over the country doing the exact same thing, and kids are the prime target. They're the ones that won't talk. You know, for the most part, they'll keep things hidden. And with the most of it being vapes, it's seemingly innocuous. So if a parent finds a vape in their stuff, it's like, you know, you kind of just. You're like, where'd you get this? Kind of just, oh, some older kid gave it to me, or like, my friend gave it to me, or, you know, it's.

[A]

Because most. A lot of parents. I don't know how many parents, maybe not most, but a lot of parents are carrying vapes around these days.

[B]

Parents and. And teens. Teens are, too.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, it's the. It's the. Definitely the gateway drug to finding a dealer online. I'm. I'm pretty convinced that, you know, it's like, it starts in high school, it gets normalized. They find a dealer to sell them a vape, you know, because they saw other kids doing it, and then, you know, before you know it, they want to try something else.

[A]

Sorry I didn't ask this earlier, but did Avery. Was he trying what he thought was MDMA in a vape? Or was it in a different form?

[B]

No, I think it was like in a. In a powder. So I wasn't. This all happened at his mom's house, but my understanding, reading the public records, is that it was like a pink powder. Pink crystalline powder.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. What do you want parents to know? Besides what we already talked about? Is there anything else that you think is really important for parents to be thinking about, to be talking to their kids about?

[B]

I. I mean, I think, you know, focus first and foremost on what you have control over, you know, because you don't have control over devices. Like don't even trick yourself for a second that you do, because kids will outsmart you with them. I found myself outsmarted with a lot of my restrictions and, you know, parental controls that I was setting up. But what you do have control over is to really prioritize giving your children a good, structured, balanced, loving life. And I think kids, especially nowadays with phones and, you know, parents also getting distracted by phones and there's, there's a lot of routine missing for kids in, in their lives. And it's so healthy for them. Like, they really do thrive by having a routine. They're more relaxed, they, you know, less anxious. And, you know, in our age of the anxious generation, like, anything that you can do to help them feel less anxious is going to be really helpful when it comes to, you know, potentially having chances to give in to impulse and things like that. You know, in Avery's situation, his mom and I broke up when he was three and it led to the split household. And that made everything that I'm talking about really hard. And I mean, we did try. We did try. We did our best. We tried different things. At first we started out like three and a half days at one house, three and a half days together. Then we found that to be just too short and he was actually getting physically ill going back between the houses, just so much change for, for him. So, like, wherever they can have the most structure, put them there and support, you know, each other in that because it's, it's really hard on them.

[A]

And yeah, I hear from a lot of parents who are in separate households and don't agree on the device boundaries or when to give it.

[B]

And that, that was a thing for us too, for sure. Yeah.

[A]

Okay. A lot of moms actually reaching out to me. How do I convince my ex husband that screens aren't the best thing in the world? And they, the kids don't need to be the first one to have this game or this device and that's, it's tough because it's not their household and their decision what goes on in the other one. So. But you have to kind of align on this topic because it can be confusing and hard for a kid to have one boundary regarding screens and one. I don't know, it's, it's a, it

[B]

is, it is really tough. And I do think and hope that most people listening to your podcast would probably be more aligned on the wanting to restrict and set up clear boundaries. It was tough in the other household. I do actually believe that both his mom and I were pretty aligned in the no screen and then he had some step siblings over there and so they were the ones to first get screens from the other house. And it, and, and, and again going back to like certain kids are ready at certain times. Like his older stepsister is actually very well, I think is you know, pretty well balanced person and may, may have been, you know, more mature maybe just because she's a girl and you know, in terms of being ready for it a little bit earlier. But then of course the other kids like it just become, you know, they become gollum. You know, they, they see it, they get a taste and they just, that's all know. And you do have to be like firm and, and figure out a way to introduce to your different people, you know, different people in your house at different times when they're, when they're ready.

[A]

How do parents deal with like what do you think about if you do have a 10th grader that tells you I can't socialize because I don't have social media? How do you hold that boundary? Um, because from what I've learned it is once you give it like they are going to get access to some really dangerous things. Do you think it's important to still hold that boundary?

[B]

You are asking the wrong person. Most definitely. I am not. I did. I think. One thing that I think was interesting to me is the way that my sister handles this with her daughter. Okay. She set up a Snapchat account just to be able to monitor her daughter and when her daughter's online and things like that. So it doesn't necessarily tell her all the messages going on, but she I believe is able to sort of see who her friends are and see who she's, you know, corresponding, see if she's like, you know, if it's like 2 in the morning, make sure she's not on there. And I think she, you know, it's become a part time job for her to, yeah, kind of had this somewhat surveillance over it. But if you are going to do it, that does sound like to me like a decent way to go about it. If you can stomach putting Snapchat onto your device, which I wouldn't want to.

[A]

No, I and I recommend to parents to set up whatever platform your kid wants one of them. Don't give them access to a lot at one, like more than one. But set up a kid's account or a teen's account their age on your own phone first and just experience it for a week or two. Like scroll through things, see who Snapchat recommends you connect with, add people that they recommend to you and see what kind of messages you get. Might be a dick pic from an adult man. Like it's just crazy the things that the platform is recommending to you. And then you'll probably be like nope, I don't think this is safe because adult accounts are very different than child accounts. Unfortunately amplifying stories like yours are really important to me and to other parents to get the word out about the lack of safeguards on the platforms and also just the fentanyl epidemic and that we need to have conversations with our kids really young about medicine and not taking anything from anyone that's not a doctor or your parent. That message I'm already Talking to my 4 year old about because of stories like yours.

[B]

I do think that the vape conversation for parents to have with their, you know, preteens is really important because it is the most common way that people will end up trying, you know, starting to experiment nowadays and they are. There are happen cases of fentanyl found in vapes. I don't know if it's true but someone that did narcotics task force told me that it's actually not very common for it to be in vapes because of the mechanism for it to actually activate or fire isn't really set up but, but we're in the age of synthetics and there's always going to be innovation and so we need to be like really diligent that like, you know, because it, it did cause somebody to almost die in New York, in New Rochelle, New York a couple years ago. And also a lot of the vapes are made in like, you know, basements and garages and not actually like, I think it's like 95% of the market going. It's not actually like in a controlled, you know, setting.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So they're very profit driven these dealers and they will be putting just whatever junk into this stuff to make it cheaper and just in general, vapes. There's recent studies that have shown that vapes are worse than smoking. So, you know, all good stuff to talk to your kids about. Just initial conversations.

[A]

Thank you. And let's talk briefly before we close out about a bill in Colorado 86. You testified on behalf of that bill and it did pass. Right.

[B]

It passed the Senate and it's coming up to the House soon.

[A]

Okay. And that would hold social media companies accountable for their role in enabling drug sales on their platforms. Do you have any more detail on how that one works?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, specifically with that one, there's a provision in there that could have saved Avery's life where social media companies would be required to respond to a warrant in an active criminal investigation within 72 hours. And I think that's a great rule. I think that they should. And actually the senators at the hearing even pointed out, like, you know, why aren't we attaching a million dollar fine if they don't comply? Because what are we doing more of a warrant than a warrant than before or like, like, I think it's time to start putting some heavy fines on these companies. When ads paid ads that they accepted money for are found on the programs. And when there's longer than 72 hours whole time for any law enforcement officer or judge actively looking into a criminal case, like the biggest fines. And if you're not going to run your company ethically, that's exactly what you deserve. And neither one of those things, I want to be like, so clear to anybody that might be like, oh, privacy. It's not about privacy. Because literally both of those things, we as citizens and any other company are held accountable. Yet social media companies are never held accountable when not responding to a warrant or just taking their own time or, you know, doing whatever, covering up evidence or whatever they may be doing in these cases.

[A]

Yeah, they're getting more pressure than we are in these case.

[B]

In this case, a lot more.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So if listeners, if you're in Colorado, call your. So your House rep. Right. Because already passed the Senate and ask them to pass through Bill 86. And I also think in other states, take this bill and send it off to your representative or your senator and be like, we want this too in our state. So I always want to make sure to touch on legislation because I think parents can think, like, I don't have a say in things like this. But literally today I met with my representative in the House, his team, his staffer, and we talked about bills like this. And so I'M now going to send this bill over to my rep's office. And they, your representatives, want to make positive change on things that are important for their constituents. And so, like, this part of the conversation, please don't tune out. Like, I think it's really important in making changes. I know that these companies spend a lot of money to lobby against bills like this, but parents can be louder and our voices are more important, so we need to use them and recommend

[B]

fines when they're not compliant.

[A]

Yeah. Because if there's not fine, if this small, if the fines are small, then they'll just keep doing it because they have all the money in the world.

[B]

So that's all they're. That's what they're doing now. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Thank you so much, Erin, for introducing us to Avery and for letting parents know about this threat and being open to sharing detail with them about how these kind of things go down. Because this could be anyone's story if I've learned anything, and I shared this with you earlier, but if I have learned anything, it's that these type of things can happen in any family, in any state, in any country, and that we need to hold social media companies accountable and force them to make safer choices regarding our children. And that takes sharing these stories and amplifying the message. So, Erin, thank you so much for having the strength to share, and let's stay in touch.

[B]

Thank you, Nikki. It's really. Thank you for everything that you're doing. This is so important, and it really does mean the world to me. So thank you so much.

[A]

Thank you, Erin.