Four Canadian school boards have initiated a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against social media giants Meta Platforms Inc., Snapchat Inc., and ByteDance Ltd.
Meta is the parent company to platforms like Facebook and Instagram, while ByteDance Ltd owns TikTok. Along with Snapchat, all social media platforms are popular among young people worldwide.
The school boards launching the lawsuit — Toronto District School Board (TDSB), Peel District School Board (PDSB), Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB), and Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) — are all in Ontario and believe these apps are disrupting their students’ education and learning abilities.
They’re seeking damages of upwards of $4 billion, and Toronto-based litigation firm Neinstein LLP is representing them.
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“Social media products, negligently designed for compulsive use, have rewired the way children think, behave, and learn, leaving educators and schools to manage the fallout,” the lawsuit claims, according to a release from Schools for Social Media Change.
On its website, Schools for Social Media Change describes itself as a “concerned group of school boards, schools, Canadian leaders and organizations working together to demand accountability from social media tech giants for disrupting the education system.”
The boards allege that their finite schooling sources are being strained by the fallout of students’ compulsive social media use. The situation is impacting in-school mental health programming and personnel, has caused IT costs to go up, and is depleting additional administrative resources.
Rashmi Swarup, director of education at PDSB, said concerns about social media’s effect on students’ emotional well-being, development, and safety have been growing for years.
“Urgent action is needed to protect students from further harm,” she added.
Brendan Browne, director of education at TCDSB, echoed the sentiment, adding that the “intricately crafted and inherently addictive nature of social media platforms can hamper a student’s capacity to absorb knowledge.”
“Social media has an undeniable toll on student mental health, which cannot be overlooked. In the absence of effective measures from the architects of these digital platforms, our educators find themselves increasingly involved in mitigating social media-induced matters, diverting precious time away from academic instruction,” Browne concluded in a published statement.
Colleen Russell-Rawlins, director of education at TDSB, also believes the influence of social media on young minds leads to pervasive issues like “distraction, social withdrawal, cyberbullying, a rapid escalation of aggression, and mental health challenges.”
Schools for Social Media Change demands that the targeted tech giants remediate these hefty costs to the educational system and “redesign their products to keep students safe.”
Neinstein LLP says the Canadian school boards involved in the suit will not be responsible for any related costs unless a successful outcome is reached.
For more information about the lawsuit, visit the Schools for Social Media Change website here.