A MOTHER of a 15-year-old boy who died after riding on top of a subway train doing a popular trend called the Subway Surfing Challenge is suing TikTok, Meta, and the city transit.

Norma Nazario claims in the lawsuit filed Tuesday in the Manhattan Supreme Court, that her son Zackery Nazario was persuaded through consistent videos of the trend and other dangerous stunts on TikTok and Instagram.

The lawsuit said that Zackery was “targeted, goaded, and encouraged to engage in Subway Surfing” through the social media platforms, Law and Crime reported.

Nazario is seeking damages from TikTok, Meta, which owns Instagram, and New York City’s transit agency Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).

Court documents said Zackery binge-watched multiple videos of subway surfing and that thousands of dangerous videos showed up on his feed days before he died. 

It was highlighted that a “minor should not have been allowed to see this.”

“TikTok and Instagram began pushing to 15-year-old Zackery a continuous stream of dangerous challenge videos,” the lawsuit alleges, per Law and Crime.

“Instagram was aware that Zackery was seeing content that promoted the dangerous activity, and wanted to profit off of him trying it for himself.”

ZACKERY’S TRAGIC DEATH

Zackery was one of at least five people who died while subway surfing in 2023 following a spike in the trend.

The 15-year-old opened an unlocked train door and went between moving cars to climb on top of a Brooklyn-bound J train on February 20, 2023.

His head was hit by a beam on the Williamsburg Bridge while the train was crossing the East River which led him to fall in between cars onto the tracks and was run over by another train.

“Social media and the MTA, they failed my son,” Nazario told ABC affiliate WABC in New York City.

Nazario said in the lawsuit filed with the Manhattan Supreme Court that the MTA created a “serious and foreseeable risk of harm.” 

She’s arguing this because they knew people were subway surfing but did not do enough to create barriers, lock doors, or restrict access to stop them from climbing on top of trains.  

“They could give me a billion dollars, and I’m not going to stop,” Nazario told The New York Post. 

“I’m not going to stop until the MTA and these social media companies start taking responsibility and stop killing our children.”

SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION

Matthew Bergman, co-founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center, who is representing the Nazario family said Zackery is at some fault for the incident, but that it could have been avoided.

“What happened to Zackery was neither an accident or a coincidence,” Bergman said, The Post reported.

Bergman also told WABC, “Zackery has some responsibility too.”

“No one is saying that there was not shared fault here, but what we are saying is that this didn’t have to happen.”

The lawyer also claims social media platforms flood accounts with videos they can become addicted to on purpose. 

“Zackery was addicted to social media by design and affirmatively directed to challenge videos encouraging subway surfing,” Bergman, told WABC.

The lawsuit added, “At best, the social media defendants make these engineered addiction-by-design programming decisions to push young Americans into maximizing their engagement with the social media products by any means necessary.”

New York City Transit President Richard Davey said in a statement that it was repeatedly informed people not to go on top of the subway trains.

“We’ve said it over and over — do not climb on top of trains because that won’t end well, and we implore parents to tell their children and friends to warn friends — avoid tragedy by riding inside,” Davey said. 

The U.S. Sun has reached out to TikTok for comment on the matter.

We were not immediately able to get in touch with Nazario or the MTA.