Due to their involvement in the teenage mental health problem in America, Seattle Public Schools has filed a lawsuit against the owners of many social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat.
According to reports, the lawsuit made against social media firms claims that the platforms intentionally create their products to hook young people, which causes a mental health crisis.
“Defendants have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse of Defendants’ social media platforms. Students with mental health issues perform worse, causing schools to take steps including training teachers to identify and address such symptoms, hire trained personnel, and create additional resources to warn students about the dangers of social media,” the lawsuit explained.
In the litigation, monetary damages and other penalties are sought as restitution.
Psychology professor at the University of Washington, Dr. Lucia Magis-Weinberg, told the publication that social media may truly quantify your popularity by comparing the number of likes you receive to those of your peers.
Thirty percent of students in the state spent an average of more than three hours per day on social media as of last year, according to Felicia Craick, an attorney for Keller Rohrback, the law firm that is defending the school district.
“The increase in suicides, attempted suicides, and mental-health ER visits is no coincidence. As alleged in the complaint, this crisis was already growing before the pandemic and research has identified social media as playing a major role in causing mental health problems in youth,” Craick stated.
More than 40% of teenagers reported feeling depressed or hopeless during the epidemic, according to a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research from the previous year.
