TORONTO – Schools in some of Canada’s largest cities have joined the legal fight against social media companies with lawsuits claiming Meta Platforms’ Facebook and others are harming children’s mental health and learning.
School districts in Toronto, Ottawa and Peel Region filed separate legal actions on March 27 seeking a total of about C$4.5 billion (S$4.49 billion) in damages.
The suits against Meta, TikTok owner ByteDance and Snapchat parent Snap claim the companies deliberately targeted children with products designed to create compulsive behaviour – causing disruption in the classroom and making kids more vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation.
“Endemic social media use is causing an unprecedented youth mental health crisis,” the Toronto District School Board said in a complaint filed in Ontario’s Superior Court. The companies “capitalised on their knowledge that the developing child brain is particularly vulnerable and prone to manipulation by their social media products,” the district said.
Similar claims have been made by hundreds of US school districts, who are demanding social media companies pay for the cost of addiction to their platforms.
New York City sued the same companies in February, along with Alphabet’s Google. Meta was sued by the attorneys general of more than 30 states in October. A month later, a judge in Oakland, California, ordered Meta, Google, TikTok and Snap to face hundreds of suits blaming them for hooking young people on their platforms.
Spokespeople for Meta and Bytedance didn’t immediately reply to emails requesting comment on the Canadian suits. Tonya Johnson, a spokesperson for Snap, said its platform works differently than some of the others.
“Snapchat opens directly to a camera – rather than a feed of content – and has no traditional public likes or comments,” Johnson said in an emailed statement. “While we will always have more work to do, we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping close friends feel connected, happy and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence.”
According to the Canadian school boards, about half of Ontario students aren’t getting enough sleep in part because they’re hooked on the platforms, and psychological distress and body dysmorphia are commonplace. That’s forced the schools to spend millions on hiring social workers, youth counsellors and other staff.
In its claim, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board said it’s frequently the target of anonymous social media accounts “that target either students and/or staff with false allegations, hateful and/or derogatory content” that companies often fail to remove.
Anonymous accounts are also the cause of more frequent bomb and shooting threats directed at schools, as well as vandalism that’s fuelled by viral TikTok challenges, the board said. BLOOMBERG
