Seattle Public Schools filed a lawsuit against several social media platforms and the companies behind them. These companies include TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and Facebook. The lawsuit accused the companies of being responsible for the decline in the mental health of American youths.
Seattle Public Schools sue TikTok, Meta for youth mental health crisis https://t.co/EnFW4Xgyl2
— KREM 2 NEWS (@KREM2) January 8, 2023
According to reports, the complaint against these billion-dollar companies includes that they specifically design their products and services to get young people hooked. The lawsuit claims that young people’s fixation on these social media apps leads to a poor state of mental health.
“Defendants have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse of Defendants’ social media platforms,” the lawsuit claimed.
The complaint said that students with mental health issues perform worse, causing schools to train teachers to identify and address such symptoms, hire trained personnel, and create additional resources to warn students about the dangers of social media.
The suit claimed that the schools incur additional expenses for training teachers to determine and solve such issues.
The lawsuit is now seeking monetary compensation and other penalties.
TikTok also made it to the floor of the Congress and legislators are currently debating whether the U.S. should ban the social media app. The debate comes amid concerns that data obtained by the popular social media app may fall into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. Hence, Congress passed a bill to suspend the use of TikTok on government devices last December.
The “No TikTok on Government Devices Act,” sponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), scaled unhindered without objections from other senators. The bill must still pass Congress before heading to President Joe Biden’s desk.
No less than five states in a list, including Maryland, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Texas, have all suspended the use of TikTok by all in a bid not to compromise national security. Over time, more states are expected to follow likewise.
