Schools vs. social media

Teenagers hunched over smartphone screens may elicit frowns from parents and teachers worried about excessive social media usage. Yet in a lawsuit filed in late January, one Arizona school district argues it’s worse than that. It says Facebook and other social media companies are deliberately harming kids.

In the Jan. 26 lawsuit, Mesa Public Schools claims Facebook, Google, YouTube, TikTok, and other internet companies contribute to a mental health crisis by actively marketing their platforms to youth. The 111-page complaint documents ways platforms use algorithms to manipulate youth to stay online—by pushing “suggested” content or incentivizing time spent on apps.

Many teens seem to live online nowadays. The school district cites Pew Research data showing that 1 in 5 teens say they use YouTube “almost constantly,” with TikTok and Snapchat usage rates close behind.

The detrimental effects of excessive time spent on social media is increasingly well-documented. Fallout includes exposure to pornography, cyberbullying, and discussions of self-harm or suicide, as well as a growing array of mental health ­disorders (“Social sickness,” WORLD, Feb. 25, 2023).

While lawmakers debate solutions, school districts are beginning to use traditional principles of public nuisance law to draw the line on what they say has become a mental health crisis. Prior to Mesa’s lawsuit, at least two other school districts—one in Seattle and another in Kent, Wash.—brought similar claims.

From a legal perspective, public nuisance cases pack a twofold advantage over product liability claims or straightforward claims of negligence. School districts don’t have to show specific harm to an individual or that the harm was exclusively the result of the nuisance.

Such claims have gotten results: Vaping company Juul is shelling out some $2 billion to settle multiple cases charging that its electronic ­cigarettes appeal to children. The e-cigarettes, which contain nicotine, formerly came in flavors such as mango and creme.

Protecting kids may be one of the few goals Congress can agree on these days. The bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act introduced last year by Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., would have required social media platforms to prevent and mitigate harms to minors and given parents new controls to identify harmful behaviors. But the bill failed to pass the Senate after some tech groups and civil libertarians said it would result in online censorship.

Both Democrats and Republicans want to be seen as protecting kids. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., introduced a bill to make 16 the threshold age at which kids are allowed on social media. And the Democratic-sponsored Clean Slate for Kids Online Act would allow U.S. citizens to demand tech companies delete personal information collected before a child turned 13.

Social media companies have pleaded the First Amendment and claim they are not responsible for user content posted on their platforms. Yet changing public perceptions may matter more than courtroom wranglings, according to Jason Thacker, editor of The Digital Public Square: Christian Ethics in a Technological Society.

Thacker called the recent school district lawsuits “yet another sign that our society is beginning to see that technology is not merely a tool we use, but something that is deeply shaping all of us in profound ways.”