By Carolina Journal
- The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board is suing owners of major social media platforms for contributing to a “mental health crisis” among American children.
- Close to 200 school districts across the country have filed similar complaints.
- A federal judge is scheduled to address the companies’ motions to dismiss similar complaints. The companies claim the conduct targeted in the lawsuit is protected under federal Section 230.
CHARLOTTE – The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board is suing major social media companies for contributing to a “mental health crisis” among American children. The board filed its 184-page complaint Thursday in US District Court for North Carolina’s Western District.
The suit targets owners of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube. Defendants include Meta and Google.
The Wall Street Journal reported in July that nearly 200 school districts across the country have filed similar suits. The Greensboro-based attorneys representing CMS told the Charlotte Observer Friday that other districts in North Carolina plan to file suit.
“American children are suffering an unprecedented mental health crisis fueled by Defendants’ addictive and dangerous social media products,” according to the lawsuit. “In the past decade, Americans’ engagement with social media grew exponentially, nowhere more dramatically than among our country’s youth.”
“That explosion in usage is no accident,” the complaint continued. “It is the result of Defendants’ studied efforts to induce young people to compulsively use their products—Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube. And Defendants have grown not just their user bases, but the frequency with which users use their platforms and the time each user spends on their platforms.”
“Defendants’ growth is a product of choices they made to design and operate their platforms in ways that exploit the psychology and neurophysiology of their users into spending more and more time on their platforms,” CMS’ lawsuit alleged. “These techniques are both particularly effective and harmful to young users. Defendants have intentionally cultivated children as users, creating a mental health crisis among America’s youth.”
“Defendants have done so for profit,” the complaint continued. “Adolescents and children are central to the Defendants’ business models. These age groups are highly connected to the Internet, more likely to have social media accounts, and more likely to devote their downtime to social media usage.”
“Additionally, youth influence the behavior of their parents and younger siblings,” the CMS suit continued. “As one Defendant put it, ‘los[ing] the teen foothold in the U.S.’ would mean ‘los[ing] the pipeline’ for growth.”
“Over the past decade, Defendants have relentlessly pursued a strategy of growth-at-all-costs, recklessly ignoring the impact of their products on children’s mental and physical health and well-being,” according to the complaint. “In a race to corner the ‘valuable but untapped’ market of tween and teen users, each Defendant designed product features to promote repetitive, uncontrollable use by kids.”
The suit targets the social media companies with charges of public nuisance, negligence, and gross negligence.
“Defendants have created a mental health crisis in Plaintiff’s schools, unreasonably interfering with the public health and safety in Plaintiff’s community and interfering with the operations and learning environment of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board,” according to the complaint. “Plaintiff and its students have a right to be free from conduct that endangers their health, safety, and welfare.”
“Yet Defendants have engaged in conduct which unreasonably and substantially interferes with the public health and safety in Plaintiff’s community by designing, marketing, and operating their respective social media platforms for use by students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board, in a manner that substantially interferes with the functions and operations of Plaintiff’s schools and with the public health, safety, and welfare of Plaintiff’s community,” the suit continued.
The school board blames the social media companies for forcing Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to hire more staff and increase staff time to deal with students’ mental, emotional, and social health issues. The complaint also alleged other ways in which social media platforms led the schools to divert “time and resources from instruction activity.”
In addition to Ward Black Law in Greensboro, the suit lists law firms in New York, Baltimore, and San Francisco as working on the case.
The Wall Street Journal reported that a federal judge is scheduled this year to address social media companies’ motions to dismiss similar lawsuits. The companies argue that the conduct targeted in the complaints is protected by a federal law known as Section 230.
What garbage. How about parents monitor what their kids are doing online. Better yet, don’t give your kids access to these things. I work for a school system. There is ZERO reason 3rd graders+ should have their own smartphones with unrestricted internet access. There is almost no content on Instagram, TT, etc that is appropriate for children. PARENTS need to do their jobs and be a parent instead of trying to be a friend/babysitter.
@Trash: Parents stopped caring about actually “parenting” their children a LONG time ago. Instead they expect the GOVERNMENT to control what books their children read, what bathrooms their children use, and what shade of history their children learn. It is easier to SUE the schools than actually teach your OWN CHILD. #BeResponsbile
Zero accountability for the lack of parenting. It’s baffling.
Wow! We live in a time where people can’t admit they failed at something and always looked for someone else to blame. This is nothing more than another attempt to silence truth and information that our lovely crooked politicians don’t want you knowing or sharing. Read between the lines. They don’t care about you or your children, they want to control your children.
I’m sorry but what??? This is the funniest thing I’ve read in awhile it should be under that joke news section. Where are the parents, why are they not monitoring their children’s online usage? If this goes through I’m losing the little faith I had left in the court system.