Meta, Google, Snap and TikTok have resolved a Kentucky school district’s claims that the platforms injured students’ mental health by designing their services to addict minors and
then serving them with potentially harmful material, such as “challenges” that allegedly encourage dangerous activity.
Details of the settlements haven’t been
revealed.
Meta and the Breathitt County School District disclosed news of the deal in court papers filed Thursday with U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District
of California. Google, TikTok and Snap informed the Rogers last week that they had settled.
Breathitt County is just one of more than 2,300 plaintiffs — including over
1,000 school districts — to sue the platforms in federal court over claims that they hook teens. Plaintiffs in the cases include attorneys general, teens and their families.
The tech companies also face similar lawsuits in state courts.
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Rogers had planned to handle schools’ lawsuits by initially dealing with just six cases — including Breathitt’s. The other five initial cases were brought by school districts in
Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey and South Carolina.
Breathitt’s suit was scheduled to go to trial on June 12.
News of the resolution
comes several months after Rogers rejected the platforms’ bid for summary
judgment — meaning a ruling in their favor, before trial.
The social platforms countered that various pre-trial evidence, including depositions by potential witnesses, didn’t
support claims that social media harmed students.
“Breathitt does not know whether any student has been diagnosed with a mental health issue linked to social media or how many
mental health harms relate to students’ use of defendants’ platforms,” the platforms argued, referencing a deposition given by a school guidance counselor,” the platforms argued.
“Breathitt routinely refers students with mental health issues to Kentucky River Community Care for counseling; but none of those referrals ever identified ‘social media addiction’ as
the cause of any students’ mental health issues,” the platforms added.
The school district contended in its court papers that students’ “addiction” to social media
addiction resulted in poor sleep, emotional issues and conflicts with peers — all of which “disrupted and harmed” the school environment, and “caused the district to expend and divert resources to
address these harms.”
For instance, Breathitt claimed it spent more than $62,000 on cellphone caddies, monitoring software and educational programs, and incurred more than
$2,100 in damages related to a TikTok challenge.
The district also alleged that they had to divert staff resources to dealing with issues caused by social media use, and
estimates that cost at $2.2 million and $3 million.
Rogers rejected the platforms’ bid to throw out the suit, ruling that Breathitt presented enough evidence to warrant a jury
trial.
“Assessing the evidence collectively, Breathitt has identified evidence … that Breathitt students actually use each of defendants’ platforms; and that each
defendant’s platforms are among the most frequently-used. A jury could reasonably infer from this evidence that it is defendants’ platforms that cause Breathitt’s purported harms,”
she wrote in a 31-page order.
Rogers previously ruled that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as well as the First Amendment protected the platforms from many claims
involving user-created content — including claims that algorithmic recommendations of third-party content caused addiction.
That ruling, however, allowed the school districts
to proceed with other claims — including that the platforms failed to warn users about potential harms, failed to label photos that had been altered with filters, and failed to implement tools that
would have limited time users spent on social media.
In March, a jury in Los Angeles on Wednesday found Google’s YouTube and Meta Platforms liable for harming a young woman’s
mental health by designing their services to be addictive, and said the companies should pay $6 million. That same week, a jury in New Mexico found Meta liable for violating that state’s consumer protection law and
ordered it to pay $375 million.
