{"id":297973,"date":"2026-02-14T15:47:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T15:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/297973\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T15:47:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T15:47:26","slug":"time100-health-matthew-p-bergman-and-laura-marquez-garrett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/297973\/","title":{"rendered":"TIME100 Health: Matthew P. Bergman and Laura Marquez-Garrett"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"rich-text self-baseline font-graphik text-body-large text-black-coffee mb-0 focus-visible:outline focus-visible:outline-black-coffee focus-visible:outline-2 focus-visible:outline-offset-2 focus-visible:shadow-focus-color text-left\" data-testid=\"paragraph-content\">More than 4,000 families have enlisted the Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC) on behalf of their children, who they say were irreparably harmed by social-media apps and AI chatbots. Founder Matthew P. Bergman has led the charge alongside fellow attorney Laura Marquez-Garrett, propelled by what he views as a \u201cpublic-health emergency.\u201d Since January 2022, the SMVLC has filed lawsuits against tech giants\u2014like <a href=\"https:\/\/socialmediavictims.org\/meta-lawsuit\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Meta<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/socialmediavictims.org\/tiktok-lawsuit\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">TikTok<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/7334078\/matthew-bergman-social-media-victims-lawsuits\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">OpenAI<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/character.ai\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Character.AI<\/a>\u2014including cases in which victims <a href=\"https:\/\/socialmediavictims.org\/meta-lawsuit\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">have died by suicide<\/a> after allegedly being encouraged to do so on the platforms. In May, a federal judge ruled that a first-of-its kind wrongful death <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jdsupra.com\/legalnews\/lawsuit-against-character-technologies-3553064\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">suit<\/a> against Character.AI and Google could move forward\u2014a milestone in holding platforms accountable. (The two companies <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/07\/technology\/google-characterai-teenager-lawsuit.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">settled with the family<\/a> in January.) \u201cThese are people who have suffered the worst loss anybody could imagine,\u201d Bergman says. \u201cI&#8217;ve never had clients who care less about the money and more about the justice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 4,000 families have enlisted the Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC) on behalf of their children,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[47092,9810,103,397,396,61,60,28976,709,47094,12277,139977],"class_list":{"0":"post-297973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-accolades","9":"tag-franchise","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-health-care","12":"tag-healthcare","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-list","16":"tag-magazine","17":"tag-special-project","18":"tag-sponsorshipblock","19":"tag-time100-health-2026"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}