Seattle public schools sue social media for “hurting kids”

All the schools of the American city of Seattle have sued the social media giants: Meta that controls Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Google for YouTube, TikTok of the Chinese company ByteDance, and Snap, the company that controls SnapChat. They did it to protect young people and this is the first class action lawsuit of its kind.

This is what the complaint reads: «The defendants successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of young people, hooking up tens of millions of students across the country through a vicious cycle of positive social media responses leading to overuse and abuse of the platforms». There is talk of an addiction and there is obviously money behind it. “The content that the defendants propose and direct to young people is too often harmful and aimed at exploitation for economic interests”.

The schools, a hundred with about 50,000 students, say they cannot do their job and carry out their educational mission. They fail because students suffer from anxiety, depression and other problems related to excessive use of social media. The lawsuit coming from the schools follows many brought by families, some connected to cases of suicides of children. They are causes of the last two years and also collect the consequences of the lockdown.

Between 2009 and 2019, there was a 30 percent increase in the number of Seattle public school students who reported feeling “sad or hopeless nearly every day for two weeks or more straight.” From here started phenomena of isolation and withdrawal from the company.

Added to this are the investigations of the Wall Street Journal, the Facebook Files, born from the revelations of Frances Haugen, former product manager of Mark Zuckerberg’s company. “I repeatedly saw conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook, and Facebook each time chose what was best for them,” he said. And again: «A research carried out by Facebook says that the more young women who follow content related to eating disorders, the more they follow these themes, the more they become depressed. And this leads to using Instagram more ». Just to give two examples.

Social media companies have always defended themselves by saying they are only partially responsible for the content posted by users, but also the president Joe Bidenin his State of the Union address, had asked Congress to “hold platforms accountable for the national experiment they are conducting on our children for profit”.

The Seattle schools lawsuit does not accuse social networks for content, but for management, the method also reported by Haugen. «The plaintiff does not claim that the defendants are responsible for what third parties have published on the platforms, but rather for the own conduct of defendants who actively promote content harmful to young people, as messages in favor of anorexia and which cause eating disorders».

The school district is asking the court to order the companies to stop this activity and to pay damages to the families. Companies should also pay for tuition prevention and treatment for excessive and problematic use of social media.

– The conduct vote against bullying? “It will not work”

– The educator: «Less homework for the holidays? I’d just abolish them.”

– Less homework, better results: a study confirms it