Drones are in the sky, the MTA is warning daredevils about the risks and social media companies say they’re cooperating but kids keep dying trying to surf the subways.
The deaths of Zemfira Mukhtarov, 12, and her friend Ebba Morina, 13, while riding atop a J train in Williamsburg in October highlighted authorities’ struggles to stop the trend, which has been fueled by online clout. They were the fourth and fifth subway surfing fatalities this year. Last year, six subway surfers died. In 2023, five people died while subway surfing.
Matthew Bergman, an attorney representing the mother of a subway surfing victim in a lawsuit against social media giants, said the trend is fueled by an online culture. Subway surfing will persist as long as the toxic effects of social media persist, he said.
“Inevitably, kids are going to be led down these rabbit holes,” Bergman said. “A prerequisite, or a condition to these kinds of subway surfing challenges and subway surfing behavior is kids that have an addictive, unhealthy relationship with social media.”
Ruslan Mukhtarov said that was the case for his daughter, Zemfira.
“She met all of them online,” Ruslan said in an office for his woodworking business in Red Hook just weeks after Zemfira’s death. “It’s so easy for them to meet new people on Instagram and get friendship together right away … These kids, they meet online, they talk two, three sentence, they become friends.”
The New York Post reported that Zemfira posted videos of herself performing dangerous stunts, including traversing a beam on top of a bridge and laying down on subway tracks, on a now-shuttered TikTok account.
Social media companies like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat pledged to remove subway surfing context in 2023 after facing criticism from the MTA and Mayor Eric Adams. But searches by Gothamist on Instagram show the videos can still be easily found using search terms like “subway surfing Brooklyn,” “subway surfing Manhattan” or “subway surfing nyc.”
Meta — the parent company of Instagram — did not respond to a request for comment.
At a board meeting this month, MTA Chair Janno Lieber explicitly called out Meta for not doing enough to block the content.
“I’ll tell you, one company that I’m not thrilled with and I’ve messaged it to them a couple times, is Meta, because Instagram seems to be a place where still, more subway surfing videos do get to live for too long,” he said. “They should have the capacity to shut this down. If it were child pornography, they would figure out how to shut it down.”
As the MTA continues to press social media companies for subway surfing content moderation, it is also taking other measures.
The agency is testing out rubber bumpers between subway cars along the 7 line that block subway surfers from climbing onto trains’ roofs.
The Adams administration has touted drones that survey elevated train lines like the 7, J, M and Z, which are popular among subway surfers. The administration said the gadgets had prevented hundreds of deaths.
But at a meeting of the community precinct council for the 90th Precinct in Williamsburg, just weeks after Zemfira and Ebba died, Commanding Officer Vincent Seminerio said the drones’ effectiveness is limited.
“The drones do go out, but if I’m being honest, by the time the drones come … the kids are [already gone],” said Seminerio.
For two years the MTA has broadcast announcements over the intercom posted warning on screens urging kids to “Ride Inside, Stay Alive.”
“These are unfortunate individual decisions by kids to put their lives in danger for a thrill,” Lieber said in a news conference this month. “I’m very proud of what the MTA has done to try and educate everybody about the dangers of subway surfing.”
But all those efforts did not prevent Zemfira from climbing on top of the J train. Her father described her as having a “fire in her soul” and a self-awareness beyond her years.
“Before this accident I was a very happy person, and now I don’t know, I lost [the] most important piece in my life,” Ruslan said. “I can’t even imagine how to describe this.”
Ramsey Khalifeh
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