A U.S. District Court in Oakland, California, has ruled that dozens of school district lawsuits against social media companies may proceed to trial, resulting in what Bloomberg calls “significant exposure” for tech giants Alphabet (parent of YouTube and Google), Meta (parent of Facebook and Instagram), Snap (parent of Snapchat), and others.

U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers denied a request for dismissal in some 150 cases where school districts seek reimbursement for additional costs which the districts say are due to smartphone addiction. School administrators blame social media addiction for students becoming sleep deprived and displaying a host of behavioral problems.

It looked like the tech giants might get off the hook. In April of this year, a judge ruled that Mark Zuckerberg could not be held personally liable for his decisions at Facebook and Instagram to develop knowingly addictive algorithms. Then in June, a California state judge ruled in favor of the tech companies in some 600 lawsuits where school districts were seeking reimbursement for the costs of student smartphone addiction.

Judge Rogers also let a case proceed against Meta by 42 state’s attorneys general for Facebook and Instagram intentionally hooking kids on their platforms. Bloomberg estimates the potential liability from the 150 school district lawsuits to be orders of magnitude beyond what the attorneys general are asking for:

[T]he school cases may carry bigger potential monetary damages because each district seeks to recoup institutional costs from the negative repercussions of having hundreds of individual students hooked on social media.

It’s hard to believe that social media companies would knowingly induce mental illness in children, but Judge Rogers says the theory deserves to be heard in court. There is a fine line between designing a product to be popular and one that is compulsive. Designing products that knowingly cause health problems, such as tobacco products, is possible with adults but never legal with those who cannot legally consent to taking the risk.

In statements published by Bloomberg, neither Meta nor Google commented on the allegedly harmful features of their platforms, instead focusing on the parental controls they now offer. The hundreds of cases pending in California state courts that were assumed to be settled could now proceed with this federal court ruling. It appears that social media companies are going to have to present their case in court. We look forward to reporting on that here at AddictionNews.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published October 30, 2024.

Sources:

“Meta, Google, TikTok Must Face Schools’ Addiction Claims,” Bloomberg, October 24, 2024.

“Meta sued by 42 attorneys general alleging Facebook, Instagram features are addictive and target kids,” CNBC, October 24, 2023.

“Lawsuits for Social Media Addiction and Mental Harm,” NOLO.com, September 18, 2024.

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