At age 18, he’s already graduated law school. Now he wants to fight ‘extremely predatory’ social media companies

Jimmy Chilimigras graduated from law school at age 18. Photograph: Loyola University View image in fullscreen Jimmy Chilimigras graduated from law school at age 18. Photograph: Loyola University At age 18, he’s already graduated law school. Now he wants to fight ‘extremely predatory’ social media companies Jimmy Chilimigras graduated high school at 12 and is now pursuing a master of laws degree – and he wants to find ‘an area to do some good’ A Mississippi teenager who in May became one of the youngest ever law school graduates says he wants to help reform US tax law as well as litigate against social media companies over claims that they design their products to be addictive – and therefore harmful – to youths. “What they’re creating is extremely predatory and harmful, and yet they’re sending it out knowing that it’s … harmful and not really taking any action to reduce the harm or address it,” 18-year-old Jimmy Chilimigras said with respect to his interest in participating in such social media litigation. “You have a duty to protect people from harm, and if [you] breach that duty, and that breach causes these people damages … you should be held liable.” Chilimigras shared those ambitions in an interview with the Guardian recently in which he also detailed his unique educational journey, including his becoming the world’s youngest certified public accountant (CPA) – and, given his age, his ordering milk or cranberry juice at law school functions where his classmates tended to get alcoholic beverages. As his family has put it, Chilimigras displayed signs of being highly intelligent quite early growing up in the Mississippi community of Bay St Louis. He could speak in full sentences at age two, and he undertook home schooling through high school, completing textbook-based courses and related testing at his own pace with his parents’ supervision. The result was a high-school diploma for Chilimigras at age 12, when most US students are middle schoolers. And by 15, when the vast majority of his peers were not even midway through high school, he had attained both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in accounting, having completed the requisite coursework online. Chilimigras acknowledged that experience was atypical – and, as far as he sees it, that is completely OK. “I think learning being asynchronous, where different people are allowed to move at different paces, is really valuable,” he remarked. “I think one thing that modern education gets wrong is just having everyone moving at the exact same pace, no matter their life circumstances – who they are, what they’re interested in or what their ability is. “I think that’s a mistake – and that we are losing out on potential because of that, and a lot of people [are] being forced to do things that they shouldn’t be.” ‘They’d know my name’ From there, Chilimigras tackled the challenge of taking an exam to become a CPA, consisting of four parts that are each about four-and-a-half hours long. He said it took hi