As kids return to Batavia City Schools this week, there are a couple of things most likely happening: along with their notebooks and pencils, they are bringing their cell phones and using social media.
The district’s Board of Education, however, has decided that such practices are causing students harm and have agreed to join a consortium formed to sue those social media giants — TikTok, Snapchat, and Facebook, for example — for creating “a youth mental health crisis caused by social media addiction.”
A legal team — the same one that brought suit against e-cigarette company JUUL, representing 300 school districts including Batavia, and won — is now on the trail of those social media magnates.
The Batavian asked city district Superintendent Jason Smith why the district opted to join the lawsuit — is it a matter of, they’ve got nothing to lose? What harm does he believe social media is causing? Does any responsibility fall to the home as a breeding ground for these actions?
“I honestly think it's a balance of family responsibility and the responsibility of other entities to market and use their products in a safe and responsible manner,” Smith said. “As with any tool, there are positive and negative aspects. We can look back in history and examine how reforms occurred in the auto industry, tobacco marketing, etc. Social media is clearly a positive tool and can be used for good, but I think there is a collective responsibility to manage it properly and well between families and the companies themselves.”
So who is ultimately responsible?
The National Social Media Litigation Team of Wagstaff & Cartmell, Beasley Allen Law Firm and Goza Honnold Trial Lawyers believes the evidence is irrefutable, and Smith deferred to them for part of his answer:
“Everything about these products — from inadequate age verification measures, insufficient parental controls, endless scrolling, constant notifications, and targeted algorithms — have been designed to addict teen and adolescent users,” the team states in its supplemental materials. “These companies are fueled by their own greed and have put profits over the safety of our youth. As a result, children across the country are suffering mental and physical harms.
“The problem,” the team says, “is that social media companies like Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube/Google knowingly put young users in harm’s way to generate billions of dollars in profit. They adopted targeted algorithms to collect adolescent users’ data unethically, used addictive psychological tactics to increase adolescent and teen usage, and feature inefficient controls to help parents exercise their rights and duties to monitor and limit their children’s use.
“As a result, our children are becoming addicted to social media, resulting in mental and physical injuries like anxiety, depression, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, suicidal ideation, self-harm, and even death,” the team states.
What will this cost the district? How would you spend anything won?
There is no cost to the district for signing on to the lawsuit, Smith said; it will be handled “on a contingency fee basis.”
So if they lose, it will cost nothing, and if they win, they will reap some of the proceeds.
“If the district has the opportunity to receive a settlement, we will use it for proactive educational programming for our students, as we did with the Juul settlement,” he said.
According to its supplemental material, this consortium was formed to “work jointly on behalf of public entities in the investigation and prosecution of claims for damages arising out of negligence, public nuisance and other claims against social media companies like Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Tik Tok, Snapchat and YouTube/Google.”
“We are committed to representing public entities, large and small, across the country. We will work to obtain just compensation for the mental health crisis and the costs imposed on public entities by irresponsible social media companies,” it states.
In March, Batavia City School board members unanimously approved nearly $36,000 in settlement funds from a lawsuit in which the district claimed injury, malice, oppression and fraud against Juul Labs. The city school district was one of 143 districts involved in the lawsuit against the makers of the popular vaping products, alleging that the company “fraudulently and intentionally marketed” its products to children and that those products caused numerous health, financial and structural damages to the district and students.
According to lawsuit documents, the district had to hire additional personnel, including a second school resource officer, divert current personnel to retain students on campus when possible, purchase extra equipment and supplies, repair damages, and deal with behavioral issues.
The expected proceeds were going to be invested into the city district’s “preventative and restorative” program called Vape University, Superintendent Jason Smith had said. Operated at the high school, Vape U is a pilot program geared toward helping students with positive replacement behaviors for vaping.
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