Her daughter died after buying drugs online. She wants every parent to hear her story.

USA Today

03-04-2025

Her daughter died after buying drugs online. She wants every parent to hear her story.
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Growing up, Massachusetts teen Becca Schmill loved reading. She would often stay up past her bedtime reading a 'Harry Potter' book with a flashlight.
Her mother Deb Schmill says that changed when smartphones entered the picture. She described Becca and her teenage peers as always having their phones in hand, unable to pull away from them at the family's Passover Seder or while at a group hangout with friends.
Years later, Becca used that same smartphone to purchase drugs from dealers on social media. On September 16, 2020, the 18-year-old died from drug poisoning after ingesting fentanyl-laced cocaine she bought from a dealer she found on Facebook.
Now, Schmill is raising awareness about the dangers of social media, which played a role in the traumatic rape and cyberbullying that led Becca to experiment with drugs in the first place. The family's Becca Schmill foundation advocates for policies that protect young adults online.
'She used to describe having an emptiness inside her, and she didn't know how to fill it'
At 15, Becca and her friends joined an online party chat with senior students from a neighboring high school. There, she began chatting with a boy who later raped her during an in-person encounter.
The traumatic experience was the start of a spiral that ultimately ended in Becca's death. She was cyberbullied that spring on Snapchat and within the next year started experimenting with drugs to ease her pain.
The family tried to get her back on track. They attended family counseling and enrolled Becca in two intensive outpatient programs, and while the treatment seemed to work temporarily, Becca's struggles always managed to resurface.
'She used to describe having an emptiness inside her, and she didn't know how to fill it,' Schmill says. 'These programs are two, three weeks, and then that's it. She'd be OK for a month or two, and then it would start all over again.'
It started with marijuana, xanax and pills from friends, but turned into abuse of oxycodone, percocet and cocaine aided by a network of easily-accessible dealers on social media that enabled her to find substances with a quick search on Snapchat or Facebook.
Survivors of sexual violence are more likely to abuse substances like alcohol and drugs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Protection. Victims may look toward substances to numb pain, due to confusion about their experience, or from fear family and friends won't understand the assault, according to the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization, RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network).
More: Social media took my daughter from me. As a parent, I'm fighting back.
Some dealers use emoji codes to sell drugs on social media
Most of the drug use happened under Schmill's nose. Becca got good grades and grew interested in psychology, a field she wanted to study at the University of Richmond. She worked jobs at an ice cream shop and a pizza parlor, though Schmill now suspects those paychecks may have gone toward her drug use.
Throughout it all, Schmill says Becca kept her sense of humor and compartmentalized what had happened. If the topic turned personal, that was when she would 'become hardened and jaded.'
Schmill didn't know the extent of the problem until January of 2020, when Becca was caught using cocaine in the school bathroom. Over the next six months, she bounced in and out of adult treatment in three different residential treatment centers at the start of the pandemic.
Drugs are becoming increasingly accessible on social media, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. In 2021, the agency investigated more than 80 cases of drug trafficking that occurred on internet apps.
Teens can easily locate drugs on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, where drug traffickers often make advertisements in disappearing 24-hours posts, according to the DEA. These traffickers often use code words and emojis to avoid being detected by law enforcement or censored by platform guidelines.
Buying and selling drugs is prohibited on Meta-owned platform like Facebook, according to a Meta spokesperson. In November 2023, Meta introduced a stricter policy to address the sale of fentanyl, cocaine and heroin on its platform and in 2024 introduced teen accounts that automatically turn on safety protections for users under 18.
'Every parent needs to know'
The DEA outlined the issue in its One Pill Can Kill public awareness campaign with a poster titled 'Emoji Drug Code: Decoded,' that features common emoji codes for drugs including percocet, oxycodone, xanax, adderall, MDMA, meth, heroine, cocaine, mushrooms and marijuana.
'It was frictionless, because you get on, you find a drug dealer, they'll either have it sent to you, have someone drive it to you, or you meet them somewhere, and it's pretty easy to get whatever you want, whenever you want,' Schmill says.
Fentanyl has become a key player in adolescent overdoses like Becca's. From July 2019 to December of 2021, the CDC tracked that 84% of teen fatal overdoses involved illicitly manufactured fentanyl and counterfeit pills were present in 25% of deaths.
'It can happen to anybody, and particularly in today's world,' Schmill says. 'Every parent needs to know about fentanyl, and they need to talk to their kids about fentanyl.'
One of Schmill's coping mechanisms since her daughter's death has been advocating for policy change through the family's foundation, which supports bell-to-bell phone free schools.
She traveled back and forth from Massachusetts to D.C. monthly throughout 2024 and from more than a dozen lawmakers to lobby for passage of the Kids Online Safety Act, which was killed by the House GOP. It would have required social media companies to show that they are taking "reasonable measures" to protect minors from harms online including content promoting suicide, violence, bullying, eating disorders, sexual abuse, drug use and mental health issues. The bill also would have allowed teens to opt-out of algorithmic recommendations.
Schmill says maintaining open communication with teens is the most important advice she has for other parents. She wants parents to know that social media has changed the landscape for teens to access substances, and that there is no such thing as safe drug experimentation because of fentanyl.
'Parents need to know that no prescription pill that did not come directly from the drug store is safe,' Schmill says.
Rachel Hale's role covering youth mental health at USA TODAY is funded by a grant from Pivotal Ventures. Pivotal Ventures does not provide editorial input. Reach her at [e-mail] and @rachelleighhale on X.