A car crash killed an SC teen. Her family say Snapchat encouraged the driver to speed

Kaiea Batts was just 14 when she was killed in a one-car crash on John’s Island in 2021. Now, a lawsuit filed in the South Carolina teen’s death says that Snapchat, which maintained a controversial feature on its popular social media app, is to blame.

The lawsuit filed in South Carolina federal court alleges that the driver of the car, an unnamed 16-year-old, was using Snapchat’s “Speed Filter” at the time of the crash.

The filter, which was criticized for being linked to the deaths of several teens in car accidents, allowed users to superimpose a speedometer recording their speed over photos and videos.

Critics at the time said that it was predictable that the feature would encourage dangerous behavior, but past lawsuits against social media companies foundered when confronted by the strong protection these companies have against being held responsible for user-generated content.

But recent rulings in cases involving Snapchat’s speed filter have opened a crack in this defense, which could expose the multi-billion dollar app maker to the kind of liability lawsuits faced by the manufacturers of any product that proves dangerous to the consumer.

“As a company, you’re supposed to make sure it’s (your product is) safe. There are different ways to do that, but especially when you’re creating something that is used by and primarily targeted at young people and impressionable teenagers,” says Gedney Howe, IV, one of the attorneys representing the Batts family. “Instead of taking those precautions, we’ve got a company, and in some cases an industry at large that kind of flout the rules, and acts like they don’t apply to them.”

Snapchat has maintained that it has always been focused on the safety of its users.

“We can’t comment on specifics of pending litigation, but nothing is more important than the safety and well being of our community,” said a Snapchat spokesperson in response to questions from The State. “From the beginning, the speed filter had a warning telling users not to Snap and drive. Years ago, we disabled the speed filter at unsafe driving speeds and in 2021 it was removed from the app altogether. We continue to take steps to prioritize the safety of our users.”

With over a hundred million users in the United States, Snapchat is one of the most popular apps in the country. It reaches an estimated 75% of millennials and Gen Z. Over half of the app’s users are between 13 and 24-years-old, according to Hootsuite, a social media management platform.

While the company maintained that the app was intended for benign purposes the new lawsuit brought on behalf of the Batts family by the Law Offices of Gedney Howe and the law firm Pierce, Sloan, Kennedy & Early LLC, argue that it was foreseeable that the engagement-driven nature of the social media app would encourage its teen users to try and reach dangerously high speeds on the filter.

“When you run into these companies that are always trying to create something new to engage the public, but some ideas are better left on the cutting floor. Some just belong in the trash. And that’s the conclusion you reach when you think about who your user base is and how this is going to be used,” Howe said.

“A ray of light”

Kaiea Batts was just a month away from turning 15 but her parents remembered her as an old soul.

Born in West Virginia, Batts moved with her family moved to Johns Island, where she attended First Baptist High School. She was a cheerleader, with lots of friends with dreams of becoming a pediatric plastic surgeon, her parents say. But in many ways it was her love of reading that stood out — since her death Batts’ parents have established Great Wave Books, a nonprofit dedicated to providing books for underserved communities.

She was a “ray of light,” her mother, Susan, said.

And, like many teenagers, Snapchat was part of the fabric of her life.

“They (Batts and her friends) would share pictures with each other,” said Batts’ mother. “It’s just a primary method of communication right now for that age group.”

On the night of her death, the driver, who was charged with reckless homicide, was using the Speed Filter and driving at dangerous speeds, according to the lawsuit.

Batts was killed when the Hyundai Sonata went off the roadway and struck a tree.

“We would like to raise awareness,” said Batts’ mother. “And have these companies be more mindful of safety and how the app might be used by the target population.”

A troubled history

Batts was far from the first teen whose death in a car accident has been linked to the Speed Filter.

Just five days after Christmas 2015, three teenage girls recorded themselves going 106 miles per hour before crashing into a tractor trailer in Pennsylvania. A video obtained by a local TV station showed Snapchat’s Speed Filter hitting 115.6 miles per hour before a 2016 crash that killed five in Tampa, Florida.

In 2017, three teenage boys in California burned to death inside of a car after recording themselves going 113 miles per hour and hitting a tree.

Over nearly a decade, Snapchat made repeated adjustments to the Speed Filter. The feature was redesignated a “sticker,” giving it less prominence in the app. Activating the filter prompted the app to warn “Don’t Snap and drive,” and the top speed displayed was quietly capped at 35 miles per hour, according to NPR.

In June, 2021, the same week that Batts died, NPR reported that Snapchat was removing the Speed Filter.

The feature “is barely used by Snapchatters,” a Snapchat spokesperson told NPR at the time. “And in light of that, we are removing it altogether.”

Was the Speed Filter reasonable?

In the past, Snapchat and other social media companies have relied on the broad protections provided under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

The provision establishes that providers of an “interactive computer service” are not responsible for the content their users create. This has allowed Snapchat and other social media companies to convince courts to dismiss lawsuits stemming from content created by users.

It’s part of the bedrock of law that governs internet usage in the United States, and it protects social media companies from being treated like the manufacturer of any other product, says Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who focuses on questions of technology.

“Section 230 is designed to prevent questions of reasonableness from even coming up,” Walker Smith said, as it almost always prevented plaintiffs from suing companies over user generated content.

But applying that blanket protection to social media companies may no longer be appropriate when the internet and apps are in every part of our lives, Walker Smith says.

“When Section 230 was enacted the internet was a curiosity, it was a side thing. And now the internet is life,” Walker Smith said.

But recent cases, including federal lawsuits in Georgia and Califorina, have seen courts take a more critical look at whether Section 230 is the appropriate standard by which Snapchat should be judged.

Foremost among them is a 2021 ruling by a federal judge in California that revived the lawsuit brought by the families of the three teenage boys who hit a tree after recording themselves going 113 miles per hour.

The case, known as Lemmon v. Snap, was initially dismissed on the grounds of Section 230. But in his decision reinstating the case, a federal court judge said the question that should be considered was whether Snapchat was negligent in designing the Speed Filter.

“There is realistically no purpose for the Speed Filter other than to encourage users to travel at high speeds and record themselves doing so.” wrote U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald, who said it was “extremely foreseeable” that minors and young adults would use the Speed Filter for that purpose.

In his ruling, Fitzgerald said that the case should be weighed on the merits of product liability, which have set a standard that companies are expected during their design process to consider how a customer will use their product.

A month later, Snapchat announced that it was removing the Speed Filter.

To some, it would be common sense for every feature of an app or social media platform to be considered as a design decision that should be subject to liability, said Walker Smith. But to others, that approach could change the entire face of the digital economy.

“If this end run through unreasonable design is always available, then every platform will simply be framed as a series of design choices, that should be subject to liability,” said Walker Smith. “And then the concern goes, the whole free spirit of the internet will collapse.”