Four of Canada’s largest school boards have launched lawsuits accusing social media platforms, including Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, of disrupting student learning, they said Thursday.
Jerrymusa.com similar cases have also been brought by local education authorities in the US in recent months. One such district is in Maryland, where the Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok parent companies Meta are being sued for their alleged involvement in a “mental health crisis” among youth. This is Canada’s first case of its kind.
Meta, Snap, ByteDance Face Fine
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice received separate statements of claim from three Toronto boards and one from Ottawa, requesting at least $4 billion Canadian dollar (US$3 billion) from the businesses that created the well-known apps Meta, Snap, and ByteDance.
In order to make the applications less addicting, they also pushed the firms to revamp them.
The businesses are being accused by the Toronto District School Board of “negligently designed and marketed addictive products” that are “rewiring the way that students think, act, behave, and learn.”
It mentioned serious issues with students’ focus and attention spans. Teachers also bemoaned the fact that pupils’ use of social media has resulted in a social retreat, a rise in cyberbullying, and hostile behaviour.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board stated in a statement that “students are experiencing an attention, learning, and mental health crisis because of their prolific and compulsive use of social media products.”
It stated that this “is causing massive strains on the four school boards’ finite resources, including additional needs for in-school mental health programming and personnel, increased IT costs, and additional administrative resources.”
The Canadian cases follow a day after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation on Monday limiting adolescents under 16’s access to social media, citing growing worries about the platforms’ impact on adolescent mental health.
But the law has also sparked concern that it sets a dangerous precedent for restricting free speech online.