Meta Sued by US School Board for Social Media Addiction

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is one of several social media companies that have been the subject of a complaint filed by the San Mateo County Board of Education. By making students addicted to their platforms, the complaint claims that these businesses are to blame for a mental health crisis among students.

In order to address psychological issues that do not have a historical counterpart, such as rising suicide rates, the school board is diverting resources away from traditional teaching objectives. The businesses are also accused of racketeering, gross negligence, conspiracy, and unfair competition in the complaint.

The lawsuit that the Seattle public school district filed in January also alleged that social media companies designed their platforms to be addictive and to deliver harmful content to adolescents and teens is comparable to the complaint that the school board has filed. Numerous individual youths and their parents, in addition to other school districts in states ranging from Florida to Arizona, have brought lawsuits of a similar nature.

Meta Platforms responded to the complaint by stating that it provides more than 30 safety tools for children and families, including supervision and age verification technology, and that it wants teens to feel safe online. When teens join Instagram, the company automatically makes their accounts private and sends them notifications encouraging them to take frequent breaks.

Additionally, Meta Platforms prohibits content that encourages suicidal ideation, self-harm, or eating disorders, and it identifies more than 99 percent of the content it removes or acts upon before reporting it to the company.