Escalating teen mental health crisis spurs social media lawsuits

The teen mental health crisis has shaken school districts across the country, prompting many to wage legal battles against the social media giants they say have helped cause it, including TikTok, Snap, Meta, YouTube and Google, The 74 reported. 

Many school districts, and one California county system, the San Mateo County Board of Education, which oversees 23 smaller districts, have filed suits this year, representing roughly 469,000 students. 

Two other districts in Arizona are considering their own complaints, one superintendent told The 74. Eleven districts in Kentucky voted to pursue similar litigation, as did Pittsburgh Public Schools. Many others across the country are on the verge of doing the same, according to a lawyer representing a New Jersey district.

“Schools, states and Americans across the country are rightly pushing back against Big Tech putting profits over kids’ safety online,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, co-sponsor of the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act, The 74 reported. “These efforts, proliferated by harrowing stories from families amid a worsening youth mental health crisis, underscore the urgency for Congress to act.” 

Algorithms and platform design have “exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse of Defendants’ social media platforms,” Seattle Public Schools claimed in the first suit, filed this January.

Educators say tech companies target young users, exacerbating depression, anxiety, tech addiction and self-harm, straining learning and district finances. But the legal fight will not be easy, outside counsel and at least one district leader said. 

“We don’t think that this is a slam dunk case. We think it’s going to be an uphill battle. But our board and I believe that this is in the best interest of our students to do this,” said Andi Fourlis, superintendent of Arizona’s largest district, Mesa Public Schools. “It’s about making the case that we need to do better for our kids.” 

How seriously Mesa youth have been impacted is laid out in the court filings: More than a third are chronically absent, 3,500 more were involved in disciplinary incidents in 2021-22 than in 2019-20 and the district has seen a “surge” in suicidal ideation and anxiety.