Bay District Schools is the first in the state of Florida to join multi-district litigation against popular social media companies.
“In an attempt to try to hold them accountable for what they’re doing and the way they’re addicting our children that affects them in their education and in other more serious matters that we are going to join the litigation and go forward,” Bay District Schools Attorney Franklin Harrison said.
Companies being targeted include TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube.
Beasley Allen Law Firm in Montgomery, Alabama is leading the lawsuit. It is being filed on behalf of teens who became addicted to social media and suffered detrimental mental health effects.
“They are attracted with the click to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing,” Harrison said. “I mean, it’s not just children, but children are the most vulnerable and it’s resulted in such awful things, the suicide of children and those kinds of things and there just needs to be some controls so that we don’t have the tragedies that we have.”
Controls like more stringent age restrictions and parental controls. Harrison said social media isn’t just affecting mental health, but also taking a toll on their learning ability.
“I mean, it also affects them showing up for school,” Harrison said. “It affects whether or not they’re able to concentrate or they’re waiting for their next. ‘Let me pull my phone out and see what I can do on TikTok’ or one of the others. I mean, we’ve just got to stop that.”
Harrison stated he would like to see the district compensated for the effect social media has had on students but it will probably be years before the districts could settle the class action lawsuit.
Source : CBS42