Elijah Ott from Atascadero was like many teen boys. Active, sociable, creative. In his photos, he’s smiling and sporting the kind of long dark lashes that people pay hundreds of dollars to try to recreate.
"He loved his dogs. He was a great big brother. He had three little brothers. We were very close," said his mom, Mikayla Brown.
Eli isn’t here to speak for himself. Two years ago, when he was 15, he connected with someone through social media and met up with them. He was trying to acquire Xanax.
"He thought he was buying Xanax, but it wasn't," explained Brown. "It was fentanyl, and it was deadly. The person met him at Jack in the Box. And they were not Xanax. They were laced with fentanyl, so he overdosed in his room."
Brown is not alone in experiencing such a loss. She's one of more than 150 parents in the state who have lost children due to social media or AI harm. They're calling on California Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign two bills into law that they say would protect other families from an unimaginable and unbearable loss.
"Eli had access to social media, which I thought I was pretty good about checking on," said Brown. "When I would go check his messages or anything, there wasn't a lot going on. So I didn't really think he was active on Instagram. But when he was visiting his dad, he did find an Instagram account. Well, there were multiple Instagram accounts, actually, that would advertise for selling marijuana, vape pens, Xanax, pills, mushrooms, seemingly at their fingertips, whatever you wanted, like DoorDash."
The laws would require warning labels on addictive social media sites and restrict chatbots that lack safety rails for minors.
"When giving a child a phone, it's asking them to have self-control that we're barely even learning to have," said Brown.
"I think that the warning labels that we're talking about and these bills that we're trying to get passed would be a huge indication to parents, even when they click on the app, that there are possibilities of harm through this application," she said.
"There are warning labels on button batteries, on the package of button batteries saying 'Keep out of reach of children, can cause death or serious injury.' Yet there's children every day being harmed on social media, and there's no warning," said Brown.
Nothing will bring back Eli, but Brown hopes no other family will have to explain to their siblings that their big brother isn’t coming home.
Or live with the grief that she carries.
"Visiting the cemetery every day, still thinking that will help," she said through tears. "It doesn't. Sleep is just non-existent anymore. He's gone. It's forever. Yeah, it's unbearable, and I really thought I was being diligent about checking his phone, checking it on him, but you know, it can happen to anybody."
