Meta has reached a settlement out of court with the Breathitt County Schools regarding a lawsuit alleging that social media, including YouTube, Snap, TikTok, and others, were designed to harm school age students.
The Breathitt County case was to be the first trial in the multi-defendant/social media litigation and was scheduled for trial on June 15, 2021, and was viewed as a bellwether in a larger group of cases seeking damages associated with the alleged harm to school-age children.
This February, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in a major federal lawsuit over the impact of social media on mental health, in particular causing addiction and other unhealthy behaviours among kids and teens, in a Los Angeles trial. The lawsuit argues that social media features were engineered to maximize engagement even when they lead to problematic use, anxiety, or emotional distress among young people who use these platforms.
As part of the instances leading to these lawsuits (which have multiple claims for each child), California jury verdicts found Meta and YouTube responsible for providing damaging mental health outcomes to minors as a result of their products.
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that four in ten US teens describe themselves as almost constantly online. Almost half of the kids scrolling social media websites and apps find the quality and amount of their sleep worsening. And without a good night’s sleep, young people are more likely to feel mentally and physically weaker.
According to the CDC, the share of high school students reporting persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness climbed from around 28% to 36% between 2009 and 2019. The proportion of adolescents who say they have seriously considered suicide in the past year has risen to nearly 20%. Similar upward trends in anxiety and depression have been documented across Europe, Australia, and Canada.
At the same time, social media is not the only reason for deteriorating mental health among young people. Kids today are dealing with a broader online ecosystem that causes addiction and anxiety. Thus, regulators in different countries are carefully considering legal ways to limit the negative impact of online environments on children without introducing outright blanket bans that infringe on information access and communication opportunities.
