The South Huntington School District has joined with a number of other Long Island school districts in a federal lawsuit against the major social media companies alleging that their platforms are intentionally designed to be highly addictive, are specifically marketed to youth, and are fueling a mental health crisis in young children and teens. As a result, schools are having to devote increasing resources to addressing students’ mental health and wellbeing, investigating and responding to threats, and adjusting to disruptions to learning. The complaint accuses entities owned by Meta, TikTok, Snap, and Google of negligence and being a public nuisance. The platforms included in the complaint include Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Google, and YouTube.
“We know the damage it’s doing to our students. We see it. We're dealing with it. We see students that are more focused on their interactions on social media as opposed to their education. And they're entering places that they're not mature enough to enter. And the ramifications are extremely dangerous,” said South Huntington Superintendent Dr. Vito D’Elia.
The US Surgeon General recently released an in-depth advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. It included one study that found adolescents who spent more than three hours per day on social media faced double the risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes including symptoms of depression and anxiety.
South Huntington Board of Education President Nicholas Ciappetta said the board’s decision to join the lawsuit was unanimous.
“We decided to get involved because we had seen a number of incidents over the last couple of years of destructive social media use by students. It causes great disruption in the school district when threats are placed on social media. You investigate every threat as if it's real until it's proven not to be. In cases that were not immediately forwarded to us, we had to follow up ourselves. And that resulted in investigations, calls to law enforcement, disciplinary actions, appeals from disciplinary actions, and then other school members, other students being afraid to come to school the next day,” said Mr. Ciappetta.
In addition to needing to hire additional mental health professionals, there are other costs to the districts in terms of diversion of resources. “Curriculum has had to be revamped. Teachers have to focus on things other than their actual lesson plans,” explained Mr. Ciapetta. “We’re incorporating social emotional learning lessons more, doing assemblies on being a good digital citizen. There are costs associated with all that.”
The lawsuit is asking for money and for the social media companies to implement appropriate and stricter safeguards including improved age verification, parental notification upon sign-up, improved management of age appropriate content, and the design of their algorithms.
“We're not trashing social media. We [the school district] certainly use it as a way of getting our message out. But if you look at any of the platforms, there's a lot of negativity on there. And I think the negative always gets amplified. So you need a little more positivity and you need a little more kindness. And that's something that the social media companies can invest in too. They can partner with us to promote that message,” said Mr. Ciapetta.
“The companies know they can put more safeguards in place and they choose not to do it,” said Dr. D’Elia. “It's profitable. They're making a lot of money, and it's coming at the expense of young people. We absolutely believe that parents are grappling with this and having some struggles. It becomes part of the responsibility of the school district because we're seeing what's happening outside filtering inside. And we believe in the mission of this lawsuit.”
Joining the lawsuit comes at no cost to the school district. Lawyers taking on this case will get a percentage of a monetary recovery, if any, that comes out of this legal challenge. It’s expected that a number of other Long Island school districts will join this lawsuit in the months ahead.