The Santa Barbara Unified School District is joining a national lawsuit with over 1,000 school districts against Meta, Google, TikTok and Snapchat for harming young people’s health.
The lawsuit, filed by Frantz Law Group in a Federal District Court in San Francisco, alleges these social media companies of negligence and public nuisance for intentionally designing platforms that exploit minors and cause them to become addicted, leading to increased mental health issues.
As a result, these conditions “directly impact attendance, academic performance, and overall well-being,” Santa Barbara Unified said, in a statement.
The district is seeking financial compensation from these social media companies for the “increased cost of mental health services straining school district budgets nationwide,” Santa Barbara Unified added.
It is also seeking injuctive relief to change how these platforms operate for children, said the district’s General Counsel, Joanna Powell. This includes compliance with children’s online privacy laws, enhanced parent controls and emergency response coordination, across all platforms.
Santa Barbara Unified joins over 1,500 school districts across the country seeking to hold social media companies accountable for “their role in fueling a mental health crisis among students nationwide, harming our youth and draining school resources in the process,” district Superintendent Hilda Maldonado said Thursday.
The suit comes nearly a week after Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties for violating child privacy and consumer protection laws, in a landmark settlement with 47 states.
Additionally, over the past few months, hundreds of parents in the Santa Barbara Unified School District have urged the district to scale back use of technology in the classroom, citing the various health risks to children caused by excessive use.
As a result, the district has made incremental changes to its devices, such as banning YouTube and installing new content filters on students’ iPads. It will consider enacting screen-time limits in the fall.
