Achi news desk-
Four Ontario school boards are taking some of the world’s biggest and most popular social media giants to court, seeking $4.5 billion in damages.
The Toronto District School Board, the Peel District School Board, the Toronto Catholic District School Board, and the Ottawa Carleton District School Board on Wednesday filed a claim in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
They sought compensation from the companies behind Snapchat and TikTok as well as Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. The schools have claimed that these social media platforms are affecting students’ mental health and learning abilities and creating “widespread disruption of the education system.”
Toronto District School Board trustee Rachel Chernos Lin said schools have reported social withdrawal, anxiety, mental health concerns and an increase in aggressive behaviors among students linked to social media use.
“Over 45 percent of young people spend over five hours a day on social media,” he said. “That has a huge impact on their mental health, their well-being, their behaviour, their attention span.”
Here’s what to know.
What does the lawsuit allege?
Duncan Embury, head of litigation at Toronto law firm Neinstein LLP, said, “We have issued a claim on behalf of four of Ontario’s largest school boards against social media giants Meta, Snap and TikTok for disrupting the education system. and the impact of these products on adolescents and students and what that means for their education and what it means for the resources of the schools.”
The lawsuit alleges that the social media giants are liable because they “intentionally and/or negligently designed products and design features to manipulate the neurochemistry of the brain and to induce excessive and/or compulsive use and/or addictive and/or problematic among students.”
Lin said, “They (the apps) are doing enormous harm to young people. They affect the way they learn, the way they behave, the way they feel.”
He added, “When students are distracted, when they’re socially withdrawn, when they’re anxious… that has an impact on a teacher’s ability to deliver the educational piece and content that’s needed for children to learn.”
Imran Ahmed is the CEO of the think tank, the Center to Stop Digital Hate in Washington, DC
He said that teenagers now face a digital environment “full of misinformation, full of lies, full of hate, full of eating disorder and self-harming content. But it also changes the way they process information.”
What specific concerns are there?
The statements of claim identify specific design choices in certain social media apps, which the lawsuit alleges are intended to keep young users engaged while simultaneously reducing their attention span.
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They said that in addition to providing “endless and infinite content,” these apps lack effective parental controls, enforced screen time limits, identity verification and have inadequate age verification measures.
The statement claims that Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has included students in its marketing strategy.
The lawyers pointed to the use of Instagram’s Reels feature or the length of TikTok videos, which, in their opinion, are “a deliberate design choice to keep the user’s attention”.
“TikTok’s main feature is a “Your Page” (FYP) an infinite stream of continuous content determined by the Defendants’ machine learning algorithms,” the statement of claim said.
A Snapchat spokesperson in Canada said their platform was “deliberately designed” to be different from what it calls “traditional social media.”
“Snapchat opens directly to a camera – rather than a feed of content – and has no traditional public likes or comments. While we’ll always have more work to do, we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping close friends feel connected, happy and ready as they facing the many challenges of adolescence,” Snapchat spokeswoman Tonya Johnson told Global News.
The statement of claim alleged that Snapchat had “gamified” its product to “encourage compulsive use” through features such as Snapchat Streaks and various trophies, charms and rewards. Snapchat also has a “Snapscore,” which is directly related to the number of snaps sent and received.
A user’s Snapscore is visible to other users.
A TikTok spokesperson said, “TikTok has industry-leading safeguards like parental controls, an automatic 60-minute screen time limit for users under 18, age restrictions on features like push notifications, and more. Our team of Safety professionals are constantly evaluating emerging practices and insights to support the wellbeing of teenagers and we will continue to work to keep our community safe.”
Embury said they are working in conjunction with companies in the United States, where he said more than 500 school boards are bringing similar lawsuits.
In Florida, the state government passed a bill on Tuesday to ban children under 14 from having social media accounts, and online platforms will be forced to delete any accounts already owned by those under the legal age.
For people between the ages of 14 and 15, parental consent will be required to register a social media account.
In October, a group of 33 US states, including California and New York, sued Meta for allegedly harming the mental health of young people.
The proposed compensation of $4.5 billion is split between the four school boards, with the TDSB claiming the highest share of compensation at $1.6 billion.
Embury said, “It is a measure of the level of harm that is happening and how much resources the schools have identified that are going to be necessary to tackle that problem, as it is now and as we look to the future.”
Lin told Global News that they have also been working with parents to curb social media use.
“Parents see the same kind of dysregulated behavior at home, and that social withdrawal. And it’s very challenging. We are looking at all ways of working with parents, but we are now in a place where it is really beyond parents’ ability to manage this.”
Ontario education minister Stephen Lecce said while he agrees there are “challenges” around distraction, school boards’ resources are better focused elsewhere.
“I want school boards to spend their resources on what is important to families, which enriches a child’s life through academics. So that means getting back to basics,” he told reporters on Thursday.
Ahmed said the lawsuit is a step in the right direction as social media companies need to be tested in the courts and held accountable.
“These platforms have known for a long time about the harm they cause to young people,” he said.
