(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) Seattle Public Schools is suing four major social-media companies for their role in creating a mental-health crisis in America’s youth under Washington States’ public nuisance law.
The social media companies listed in the suit include Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Tiktok, Snapchat, and Alphabet (Google and YouTube), according to Axios.
The school district said that the mental-health crisis of young people is the direct result of technologies that have made these social-media companies the giants they are today.
“This mental health crisis is no accident,” the lawsuit said. “It is the result of the Defendants’ deliberate choices and affirmative actions to design and market their social media platforms to attract youth.”
The lawsuit argued that the social media companies predatorily preyed upon the vulnerable youth of America.
“Defendants have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth,” it said. These companies are “hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse of Defendants’ social media platforms.”
The lawsuit claimed that these abusive and predatory companies have created havoc in the mental health of their students.
Seattle School Districts said that in the past 10 years there has been a 30% growth in the number of students who say they feel “so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row that [they] stopped doing some usual activities.”
The school district is not the only entity to notice this phenomenon. A survey recently found that 82% of American parents say that internet use and social media use is detrimental to their children.
Moreover, a Texas lawmaker introduced a bill prohibiting minors from having a social media account.
Meanwhile, the Twitter Files released by new Twitter CEO Elon Musk have offered more and more evidence of a conspiracy between the federal government and social-media companies.