Six Western Pennsylvania school districts have joined the Pittsburgh city schools in suing social media platforms on behalf of students, saying Meta, Instagram, Snapchat and others are harming the mental health of America’s youth in the name of profit.
The districts filed identical 107-page complaints in federal court in Pittsburgh last week on the grounds of negligence, racketeering and other counts.
The plaintiffs are the Mount Lebanon School District along with Blackhawk, Brownsville Area, Seneca Valley, Moniteau and Burgettstown.
The defendants “have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of minors, causing millions of students across the United States, including in Plaintiffs’ district, to become addicted to and excessively using Defendants’ social media platforms.”
The suits say the social media platforms direct content to minors that is “harmful and exploitive,” such as instigating eating disorders, instigating vandalism and encouraging self-harm.
The defendants are Meta, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, ByteDance, Alphabet, Google, Whatsapp and others.
Pittsburgh Public Schools had filed a similar suit in Pittsburgh earlier this month.
Lawyers for the districts said in the complaint that America’s youth are facing “possibly the most severe mental health crisis in history” and that social media companies have spent millions to market their products to children and hook them.
The racketeering claim, filed under the civil RICO statute, says the social media companies have functioned as a “continuing unit” to achieve shared goals of marketing their services in furtherance of profit regardless of “truth, the law, or the health consequences to the American people.”
The companies have purposely worked to deceive consumers, especially children and teens, into using their platforms by “falsely maintaining” the notion that doubt exists as to whether they are responsible for damaging student mental health, the suit says.
The Pittsburgh Public Schools suit filed in early April said the companies have borrowed techniques used by slot machine companies and the cigarette industry to drive addiction and generate ad revenue.
The suit said the platforms use an algorithmically generated “endless feed” to keep users scrolling to manipulate dopamine delivery to the brain. Those feeds include awards for heavy use, metrics to exploit social comparisons and “incessant notifications” that encourage children to check their accounts constantly.
The suits are asking for damages to compensate the districts for injuries as result of the platforms’ marketing and distribution, punitive damages and legal fees, among other costs.
Torsten covers the courts for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Reach him at jtorsteno@gmail.com.
