Proactive Investors - Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, ETR:FB2A, SWX:FB), Snap Inc (NYSE:SNAP) and ByteDance, the owners of TikTok, are being taken to court by four leading Ontario school boards, who allege their social media apps negatively rewire children's thinking.
Public district school boards for Toronto and its Catholic counterpart, Peel and Ottawa are suing the owners of Facebook (NASDAQ:META), Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok for US$4.5 billion in damages.
The lawsuit claims that social media apps have negatively affected how children behave, learn and even think, and therefore have disrupted the way schools operate.
"The influence of social media on today's youth at school cannot be denied. It leads to pervasive problems such as distraction, social withdrawal, cyberbullying, a rapid escalation of aggression, and mental health challenges," said Colleen Russell-Rawlins, director of education at Toronto’s school board.
"Therefore, it is imperative that we take steps to ensure the well-being of our youth. We are calling for measures to be implemented to mitigate these harms and prioritize the mental health and academic success of our future generation."
Operating under the coalition called the Schools for Social Media Change, the group claims there is an “attention, learning and mental health crisis” because of the use of social media platforms.
Schools for Social Media Change are seeking damages from the social media companies in order to compensate costs for mental health programming, IT costs and admin resources.