The 91-page complaint filed in US district court on Friday claims the social media companies are responsible for worsening the mental health of the children that they.
What just happened? The negative impact social media can have on young people’s mental health is well documented. Now, Seattle’s school district has filed a lawsuit against the companies behind TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, accusing them of creating a “mental health crisis among America’s youth.”
The 91-page complaint filed in US district court on Friday claims the social media companies are responsible for worsening the mental health of the children that they target. The tech giants are also blamed for rising rates of anxiety, depression, disordered eating, cyberbullying, self-harm, and suicide ideation. It’s led to schools hiring additional mental health professionals, developing lesson plans about the effects of social media, and providing additional training to teachers.
The lawsuit alleges that between 2009 and 2019, there was, on average, a 30% increase in the number of students at Seattle public schools who reported feeling “so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row that [they] stopped doing some usual activities.
