Norma Nazario still remembers the knock at the door of her Alphabet City apartment the night her 15-year-old son, Zackery, died attempting the perilous activity that involves riding atop fast-moving subway trains as they speed through the city.
It was 10 p.m., Feb. 20, 2023, when police informed her that her son, a student at The Clinton School in Union Square, had been killed while subway surfing on the Williamsburg Bridge that evening. He had climbed atop a Manhattan-bound J train with his girlfriend and was struck by an overhead beam, dying instantly.
“It was a February evening, it was dark out, and I guess he didn’t see the beam,” Ms. Nazario told amNewYork. “And then, unfortunately, the train was going so fast that the impact pushed him under the train.”
Zackery was one of five individuals who died while subway surfing in 2023. The following year, the number rose to six fatalities, including an 11-year-old. Three more deaths have already been linked to subway surfing this year, with the most recent occurring on July 4, when a 15-year-old boy from the Bronx was killed.
Nazario said her son was an athletic, good student who loved history and dreamed of joining the Marines. “He really loved life,” she said through tears. “He would have made a difference. He was a light for me. He was a brilliant boy.”
This made it all the more confusing for her to understand what possessed her son to climb on top of the J train that evening. Then, she gained access to his TikTok and Instagram accounts, which she said he had become “addicted to.”
What she found, she said, was a flood of algorithm-driven videos promoting risky challenges, including subway surfing, along with content that she said appeared to exacerbate his anxiety and low self-esteem.
“I wish I had known,” she said. “They kept pushing and pushing this stuff at him. I can’t even imagine how he felt, the pressure that he felt to go do this.”
“I saw so much stuff in his phone. I couldn’t even believe it. He was bombarded with so many challenges,” she said. “I saw a couple of different challenges, mostly subway surfing, as well as ‘what to wear when you subway surf’ type videos.”
Now, more than two years later, Nazario’s wrongful death lawsuit against social media giants TikTok (ByteDance Inc.) and Instagram (Meta Platforms Inc.) is proceeding to trial, where she aims to prove the platforms promoted the viral stunt that killed her son.
‘Not going to stop’
Subway surfing is not a new trend and has existed for decades in the city, but the MTA and NYPD have both maintained that the uptick in the deadly trend amongst teenagers has been fueled by videos circulating through social media.
A New York court ruled on June 27 that Nazario’s case could proceed on negligence and product liability grounds, rejecting social media companies’ efforts to dismiss based on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and the First Amendment.
In his ruling, Judge Paul Goetz wrote that it was plausible that the social media platform’s role “exceeded that of neutral assistance in promoting content,” and “constituted active identification of users who would be most impacted by the content.”
“The court was primarily focused on whether or not claims were preempted by Section 230,” Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center and lead attorney in the case, told amNY of the federal law which has so far served as a shield for platforms from taking legal accountability for content shared on their platforms and boosted by their algorithms.
“Over the last three years … we have made significant inroads in chipping away at that defense, and this ruling is just the most recent example of that.”
Bergman’s Seattle-based law firm currently has some two thousand active cases against social media giants, all of which he said share the same core issue: harm to youth from algorithm-driven, addictive design.
Before Nazario’s case goes to trial, the next phase of the case is discovery, where Bergman’s team plans to investigate what TikTok and Instagram “knew about the promotion of subway surfing on their platforms,” “the addictive nature of their platforms,” and how they “targeted individuals such as Zackery with material that was dangerous.”
He added that discovery will also examine how the platforms “set up the challenges to maximize engagement over user safety” and what actions, if any, they took “in response to the plethora of subway surfing deaths that have been widely reported in the city of New York over the last two years.”
A Meta spokesperson said the company was disappointed with Judge Goetz’s decision to move ahead with the lawsuit, saying it “does nothing to address the merits of the case.”
“Leaders and transportation authorities have grappled with the challenges of subway surfing for decades,” the spokesperson said. “Videos encouraging this kind of dangerous activity violate our policies, and we remove them when we become aware of them. We will continue to work with MTA to address this issue, and will vigorously defend ourselves against this suit.”
Representatives for TikTok did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication.
Having launched the legal action back in February 2024, Nazario called the latest development a “relief,” even as she expressed heartbreak and frustration over other parts of the court’s decision.
“The case moving forward is great,” Nazario said. “But it doesn’t bring back my son. I miss him every day. I’m still sad about it and heartbroken.”
Judge Goetz dismissed several of her other claims, including “unjust enrichment” and intentional infliction of emotional distress, as well as those against the MTA.
But Nazario insists the transport authority still bears some responsibility, citing what she called lax security that allowed Zackery to climb onto the train roof.
“They just had a little sign that says ‘do not pass, unauthorized personnel,’” she said. “That’s not enough.”
Nazario said she plans to appeal the MTA’s dismissal from the case. “I’m not going to stop,” she said. “Something has to change.”
Judge Goetz sided with the MTA, stating that the transit authority’s functions are limited to financing and planning and “do not include the operation, maintenance, and control of any facility,” and that risk and danger of the activity “are obvious as a matter of common sense.”
Safety online and on the tracks
Since Zackery’s death, Nazario has become an outspoken advocate for online safety reforms. She supported the recent passage of the New York Child Data Protection Act and Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act, signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul on June 20.
Under the New York Child Data Protection Act, digital platforms are barred from collecting, using, sharing, or selling minors’ personal data for advertising unless they obtain informed consent, and only when the data use is essential to the platform’s basic function. Parental consent is mandatory for children under 13.
The SAFE for Kids Act mandates that platforms limit algorithm-driven content for users under 18. Unless a parent provides consent, minors must be served non-addictive, non-curated content feeds.
Bergman acknowledged that New York’s recent child safety legislation is an important step in protecting children online, but that civil litigation is still needed to bring about greater change. “There’s a vital role for civil justice, because that’s the vehicle by which social media companies can be held financially accountable for the harms that their platforms inflict on young kids,” he said.
He noted that engagement-based algorithms are at the heart of the problem. “The platforms make their money based on engagement, because the more engaged kids are, the more advertising can be put in front of them,” Bergman explained. “The companies design social media products that show kids not what they want to see, but what they can’t look away from.”
A 2023 study by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that in 2022, major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube, generated nearly $11 billion in ad revenue from users in the U.S. under the age of 18.
Based on his litigation experience, he said platforms “algorithmically direct” children toward increasingly extreme content — from subway surfing to self-harm — and use design features like “likes,” “streaks,” and “challenges” to create “a false measure of self-esteem.”
Bergman hopes that Nazario’s lawsuit will spare other families the pain she has endured and that “the companies will assume a greater level of responsibility to ensure that children like Zackery are not subjected to dangerous materials such as the subway surfing challenge.”
The City, alongside the MTA, has also upped its efforts to deter people from subway surfing in the last few years with public awareness campaigns, trialing anti-subway surfing barriers, and increased policing.
The NYPD announced a major crackdown on subway surfing last October, launching a 911 and drone technology hybrid initiative to track subway surfing.
The police department also deploys officers at stations where subway surfing has been known to take place and makes home visits with young people who have been known to participate in subway surfing.
As of early June, arrests of subway surfers are down in 2025 compared to the same time in 2024 — 88 people were arrested, 83 of whom were juveniles
As part of its Ride Inside Stay Alive campaign, the MTA said it has worked with social media companies, including Meta/Instagram and TikTok, to scrub videos of subway surfers and meets regularly with them to review their protocols and algorithms for monitoring media that prompts dangerous behavior in the subway system.
As of early last month, more than 1,800 videos had been taken down, according to MTA officials.
A search for the term ‘subway surfing’ on each app brings up a safety warning prompt for users and does not show any videos. However, amNewYork was still able to see several videos related to the trend by searching related terms.
Despite her grief, Nazario has continued honoring Zackery’s memory by throwing birthday parties and memorials, and recently attending his high school graduation ceremony to accept his diploma.
“I was just keeping myself together, she said of the ceremony. “He deserved it; he was there in spirit.”
