“Teenagers make bad decisions. They don't deserve to die from them”

NEED TO KNOW

In February 2023, Zackery Nazario died riding on top of a subway train in front of his girlfriend
His mother, Norma, felt compelled to do something when she found Zackery’s phone intact at the scene, telling PEOPLE "that was a sign"
On the one-year anniversary of his death, his mom filed suit against various companies (who deny wrongdoing) and she is speaking out publicly

Zackery Nazario always looked forward to spending Christmas in his native New York City — because of the snowfall, the visits to the Rockefeller Center tree and, of course, the presents.

But since the teen died more than two years ago while attempting to "subway surf," that once-joyous season has been shadowed by grief, his mom, Norma Nazario, says.

“Last year was harder than this year as I learned how to cope,” she tells PEOPLE in this week's issue.

On Feb. 20, 2023, 15-year-old Zackery, a young history buff who dreamed of becoming a Marine, boarded the J line with his girlfriend, another teenager, according to his family. They opened the unlocked train doors, walked in between two moving cars and climbed on top.

As the train crossed over the Williamsburg Bridge approaching the East River, Zackery was struck in the head by a beam while his girlfriend watched, then he fell between the subway cars and was run over. He died at the scene.

Norma, 54, says she realized too late that her son had become consumed by what he saw online, including content about an increasingly popular — and deadly — stunt known as subway surfing that has led to incidents around the country in recent years.

Gary Hershorn/Getty Stock Images A J line train pulls into the Marcy Avenue subway station on Feb. 3, 2020, in New York City.

Norma says she initially gave Zackery a cellphone for when he attended after-school programs. He played with Snapchat filters, then he asked his mom if he could download Instagram, which she had, too.

“I thought that social media was just good to communicate,” she says. But the boy became “addicted” to Instagram and TikTok — though Norma says she was unaware he had even downloaded the latter app until after his death.

“He wasn't letting go of the phone,” she says.

She believes Zackery was introduced to subway surfing via his Instagram and TikTok’s algorithms, though both platforms maintain that such videos are prohibited.

Surprisingly, Zackery's phone was found intact at the site of his death.

“I felt like that was a sign for me," Norma says. Almost like her son was telling her, "Eventually, you're going to open it, you're going to see what I did and everything and maybe try to put a stop to it."

Major cities across the U.S. have had issues with subway surfing — albeit in smaller numbers compared to New York City.

San Francisco had two fatal incidents in 2024, the city's Bay Area Rapid Transit tells PEOPLE, while the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority in the nation's capital says two people have died since 2023. Transit officials in Chicago say train surfing is "extremely rare" and they have only received reports of "a few incidents each year among the millions of train trips" over the past few years.

Statistics show a grimmer reality for New York City: From 2018 to 2022, there were five subway surfing deaths, the city said. In 2023 alone, five more people died followed by six in 2014 and three so far in 2025.

Hundreds have also been arrested, many of them juveniles and young adults.

David Dee Delgado/Getty Stock Images An unidentified person walks on top of a car on the 5 train on March 16, 2023, in the Bronx.

In September 2023, officials launched the "Ride Inside, Stay Alive" public service campaign across the city's subway system to try and stop surfing. (The MTA rolled out a new anti-surfing campaign in June.)

In 2024, the city said police would escalate their intervention using "911 call data to deploy joint drone and field response teams of officers to areas experiencing the highest complaints of subway surfing."

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority declined to comment to PEOPLE, but the agency has invested in open-gangway trains, which are expected to make it more difficult for people to climb on top.

The MTA has also introduced laser and infrared sensors to detect when riders have entered the tracks between stations, in tunnels or in other restricted areas and has worked with social media companies to flag and remove over 11,000 posts that depict subway surfing.

Norma Nazario is speaking out, too. Finding son Zackery's phone, she says, meant she needed to do something herself.

On the one-year anniversary of her son's death, Norma filed suit against Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, as well as TikTok, its parent company, ByteDance, and the MTA.

Norma argued in court papers that Zackery was “targeted, goaded and encouraged” to subway surf. The companies deny those allegations, and the complaint against the MTA was dismissed; other parts of the suit remain ongoing.

Matthew Bergman, Norma's attorney, contends that what happened to Zackery was neither an “accident” nor a “coincidence.”

“It was a direct and foreseeable result of the programming and design decisions that Instagram and TikTok made to prioritize engagement over safety,” says Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center.

“Teenagers make bad decisions," Bergman says. "They don't deserve to die from them.”

Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, tells PEOPLE that "well-known research" in neuroscience and psychology indicates that adolescents transitioning into young adulthood take risks with an impulse control that's not always "fully developed."

“There's the desire to show off to friends,” says Twenge, the author of the upcoming book 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World. “Those things have always been there. But now in the age of social media, it's kind of next-level what people are doing and where they get their ideas about what risky thing would be fun and cool to do.”

She adds: “What social media does is just gives kids and teens more ideas for how to do risky things they shouldn't be doing.”

Twenge, a mom of three teenagers, suggests parents not allow their children to have a smartphone until they get their driver’s license or "can make their way around your town on their own speed." She also feels kids should not have social media until they're at least 16.

courtesy of Norma Nazario Zackery Nazario (second from left) with his family.

Major internet platforms have long said they are protected from liability arising from the content created by their users under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

On June 27, a Manhattan Supreme Court judge ruled that Norma's claims of negligence, product liability and wrongful death can proceed — rejecting immunity under Section 230 and the First Amendment.

Take PEOPLE with you! Subscribe to PEOPLE magazine to get the latest details on celebrity news, exclusive royal updates, how-it-happened true crime stories and more — right to your mailbox.

The judge found that Norma conceivably alleged that the social media companies actively directed dangerous content to Zackery based on his age and did not just serve as neutral platforms.

“Her son was barely buried when she started doing this,” Bergman, her lawyer, says. “The hopeful side of me says, ‘Maybe we would've had more than six fatalities if we hadn't encouraged this.’ The sad part of me says, ‘Look how this viral challenge is still going on. They could stop this, and they're not.’ ”

Norma Nazario; Heat Initiative Norma Nazario accepted son Zackery’s diploma posthumously with Ida Cesarano of The Clinton School (left); he was also honored at a Social Media Victims Day of Remembrance event in Washington, D.C.

Norma says her ability to push through her pain has allowed her to fight for other victims and her son's legacy. On June 23, she accepted Zackery's high school diploma posthumously.

"I'm not going to stop," she says, "until it stops forever."

NEED TO KNOW

Post Related

Post Related