NEW YORK (PIX11) — Days after a 15-year-old boy’s fatal fall off a Brooklyn train, the head of the MTA challenged social media companies to remove subway surfing videos from their platforms.
During an interview on The Brian Lehrer Show, MTA CEO Janno Lieber said kids are encouraged to perform these dangerous acts because social media sites are “glorifying” the problem with the proliferation of videos.
“Everybody knows that glorifying something like what these kids are doing is increasing the problem,” Lieber said. “We’ve seen the number of subway — of these videos go up over time, and it’s had an impact on the frequency with which people riding outside of trains in general and this particular form of behavior.”
The 15-year-old boy died when his head slammed into a metal beam while he rode on top of a subway train crossing the Williamsburg Bridge on Monday, according to the NYPD. On Wednesday night, officers spotted a teen riding on the outside of a subway train in Queens. The 17-year-old was holding onto the back of the last car of a northbound no. 7 train at the Queensboro Plaza subway station, police said.
Another teen died subway surfing last year. In late 2021, a man fell from the top of a moving J train as it crossed the Williamsburg Bridge. He was run over by the train. Subway surfer deaths were also reported in 2016 and in 2017.
“The right thing to do is not to put up these videos which obviously have negative consequences. If they were running videos of people playing Russian roulette with live bullets, they would understand the consequences, and this is the equivalent for kids who are encouraged to do this by the glorification video,” Lieber said in the interview.
The MTA boss said he had no doubt the platforms, like TikTok and Facebook, could find and remove the videos but questioned whether they want to. He hopes upcoming meetings the MTA has planned with different social media companies will lead to cooperation.
“It’s really a question of will and intention, and a sense of doing the right thing … I am interested in protecting New York City kids who for whatever reason, are encouraged, incentivized to do crazy stuff,” Lieber said.
