Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram over youth mental health
geekwire.comSeattle Public Schools has seen enrollment drop 30% (!!!) over the past couple years because it is an utter shambles [0]. (correction: many schools have that level of decline or higher, but the decline district-wide is much lower). Cancelling as many advanced classes as possible, without grandfathering, so (eg) my two sons were both forced to repeat a year of math when they cancellled year-up math. An administration that is roundly hated, by parent and teacher alike.
This feels like grasping in the dumbest possible way while ignoring the actual problem: if you bore the heck out of the kids, the ones who can afford to leave will. Also being bored 8 hours/day isn't good for mental health...
[0] https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/public-school-districts-exp...
Maybe the dopamine addictions that many of these kids experience are the reason they’re bored with school. Maybe they’re a contributing reason that remote learning was ineffective.
When I was a kid, going to school was the social medium. Even the kids who skipped class physically came to school to meet up. Now that we’ve removed that incentive for attendance, no wonder kids don’t show up.
I know for sure if I was saddled with remote learning during elementary/middle/highschool I would waste all of my time playing games and try skirting by with the bare minimum. After all, that's exactly what we did with the computer lab in the school whenever we got access to it.
I still hated every minute of school lessons in school, even without social medias st the time. I know it's a one off, but boring people for 6 hours per day in high school is bad. All I wanted to do was stop being there for 6 hours.
I'm pretty sure I hit depression due to that, but was never diagnosed
It seems inevitable we will have to adapt to the new normal expected dopamine frequency
i don’t know anything about the other issues facing the school but to say social media addiction is a “dumb” thing to address seems incredibly naive to me.
growing up is hard enough as it is and social media absolutely can be detrimental to mental health if used excessively.
imo the only reason we haven’t properly addressed the issue as a society is because it’s incredibly difficult to “prove” from a research perspective given the newness of social media.
Social media addiction is an important thing to address, but a school district filing lawsuits against social media companies just seems like the worst possible way to address it.
This is an organization whose entire purpose is educating kids. If they want to address social media addiction, why on earth would they not start by educating kids about it?
I expect that'll work about as well as gym teachers teaching kids not to have premarital sex or smoke drugs. Such admonitions might sometimes work for individual kids, but on the whole they don't work.
TikTok/etc is unlike sex and illicit drugs in that it's a commercial enterprise that is operating openly and can in theory be sued into submission. You can't sue a plant anybody can grow in their closet, but you can sue a tech company.
Gym teachers telling kids not to have premarital sex or smoke drugs isn't teaching them. You can teach kids how condoms work and that STDs stay with them for life. You can teach kids that drugs these days can be laced with fentanyl and how to acquire and use fentanyl test strips.
Those things won't stop kids from having sex or doing drugs, but they can certainly and do mitigate some of the harm.
You can take a similar approach to social media. Gym teachers telling them not to use TikTok will obviously not work, but you can teach them about how their data is shared and monetized. You can show them examples of people who posted things on social media and had their lives ruined over it. If the leaders of a school district have adopted the approach that you just can't teach kids anything they don't want to hear, I think they ought to find different jobs.
As for the lawsuit, sure, you can sue a social media company? Will you win? Maybe, after extensive and costly litigation. Will those companies be forced to change their behavior in meaningful ways that will impact your students? Maybe, or maybe they'll just pay a fine and make superficial changes that last until the next lawsuit concludes in half a decade, then repeat.
And besides that, even if you manage to win and dismantle Facebook, TikTok, etc., you'll have an infinite number of other companies coming in to fill the void. You can sue a tech company, but you can't sue a general class of software. You can legislate against it, but at best that is a long, hard road.
Teach kids all you like, however you like, they're not going to stop using social media on their own. It's a digital drug engineered to be addictive, and the kids are already hooked.
Parents control if they get a phone till 18. Generally the more upper class the parent I know, the later they give their kids access.
It’s not like kids are born with an iPhone glued to their hand.
Sort of. Kids in the US can get a job and buy their own phone as young as 14.
Maybe we need to treat addiction universally and ban kids under 21 from owning a smart phone.
A kid cannot get or hold a job without parental permission.
Exactly. A student will sit there, arms crossed, internally opposing everything the administrator is saying because they've convinced themselves already its bullshit. They already think they will just find work as an influencer:
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture...
This is really silly. Putting the onus on kids to fight the addictive cues created by sophisticated social media companies that actively work to make their products even more addictive is absolutely not the right way to address it.
Though I do agree that if school districts actually cared enough today they should start by banning social media use on school premises and more aggressively monitor phone usage during class.
> Though I do agree that if school districts actually cared enough today they should start by banning social media use on school premises and more aggressively monitor phone usage during class.
AFAIK they do, but it is extremely challenging for teachers. Phone use can be very discrete, "aggressively monitoring phone usage" just isn't practical. And when teachers do confiscate phones the backlash against them is frequently strong and fierce. They face hyperbolic rhetoric about such confiscations being dangerous because "what if somebody needs to call 911!?" Even when administrators don't fold to the pressure, the teachers still need to put up with deranged rants and accusations from the parents. It's much easier for teachers if they pretend they didn't see the phone.
And schools can hardly screen every kid entering the school for a phone, every day. It would be invasive, slow, and expensive. Imagine having to go to school an hour early every day because you need to stand in line for TSA before entering the building. Not practical. We can't even keep cellphones out of prisons where invasive cavity searches are permitted. Jamming cell signals on school grounds is out of the question, it isn't legal. So given all these problems, why not sue tech companies for making these systems and services available on school grounds during school hours? I think it probably won't work, but it's worth a shot.
Yeah that’s not what I mean. I mean make it a policy to not allow people to have their phones out in class. You can also block certain sites on school WiFi networks. I’m sure some schools already have something like this already. I don’t mean implement body searches.
> I mean make it a policy to not allow people to have their phones out in class.
These policies already exist but they're practically unenforceable. Individual teachers are incentivized to ignore it because enforcing these rules causes trouble for them. And even the most enthusiastic enforcement will fall flat; discrete phone use is trivial. Even paranoid proctors can't keep phones out of classrooms during exams; asking a teacher to do such policing while also trying to teach a lesson isn't going to work. This is what they're already trying to do (or were trying to do, before giving up) and it isn't working.
Ok
This didn’t even work 10 years ago and it certainly won’t work now. A typical Seattle kids data plan is probably better than the school WiFi anyway.
Social media is awful and terrible; no argument there. But SPS has much larger problems to address internally before tackling this broader societal issue.
You can do two things at once.
You can't do them well if you're incompetent.
I don’t think anyone is imagining that SPS is going to implement social media regulation, it’s asking the courts (and indirectly Congress) to do that.
> Cancelling as many advanced classes as possible
I wish someone would compile a list of every school district that's doing this or planning on doing it, just for public knowledge purposes
Sadly this what happens with the “equity” push is public schools. There is no way to have “equalized” outcomes without dumbing down the content. This means less advanced courses.
It’s sad because somehow the idea of equal opportunity has been replaced with equalized outcomes in education.
Is this actually due to the “equity” push? The article linked by the parent points to staffing issues during the pandemic and the issue you point to isn’t mentioned.
You need to read between the lines.
No child left behind and similar punishes schools that don’t get their lowest students up to a certain test score. It does not mandate or encourage or anything else advanced classes. So when a budget cut happens, guess where the cut happens?
I'm skeptical of your 30% number. Their reports seem to indicate current enrollment of 51608 compared to a peak of 53627, down 4%. That doesn't seem out of line with demographic processes.
I'm going off the linked article, which is about multiple individual schools with that level of loss. But I appreciate the correction; I should have stated that number more carefully.
Linked article shows some individual schools losing more than 30%, but does not give an overall percentage.
There can be more than issue causing more than one problem. Thinking that problems must be solved in some sort of order is dumb on your part
Lots of comments about this being the wrong group of people to initiate this. Others playing the “is it really the same thing” card.
I find myself torn. They are often sound/reasoned arguments. But I also struggle because the state of play isn’t right either. Social media engagement is now one of the leading causes cited in divorces. My wife and I of nearly 30 years have to battle this ourselves. Something seems clearly wrong with our surveillance economy, yet we struggle to come up with sound reasoned diagnoses and remedies. I guess that’s why it persists.
So I end up both thinking this suit is “silly” and at the same time cheering them on because continued optimization along this evolving status quo vector just seems so obviously wrong.
I think you've got it right - they're trying to address a serious problem that is absolutely worth addressing, but doing it with this kind of a lawsuit is indeed silly. Even if they win, it's not going to do anything meaningful to address the underlying causes of social media addiction in kids. As an institution that has access to these kids for ~7 hours a day, they ought to be able to come up with a more productive approach.
That's exactly it. As a lawyer, I'm aware that it's technically discouraged to initiate lawsuits for e.g. "political" or "social" reasons beyond the affected parties -- but I definitely think we're in "something has to be done, or at least TALKED ABOUT" territory, and I have no personal problem with this approach.
What is it you're hoping for? Prohibition, so people cannot use social media platforms because they're outlawed? I don't think that'll work, for the same reason prohibition doesn't work for anything that a large part of the population wants.
And what even is social media in that sense. Aren't forums social media? HN has a score and you and other will be told how "the community" values your comments. Sure, it's not emoji thumbs pointing up and down and a frowny face, but what's the difference? Should HN be outlawed because someone might attach their self-worth to getting upvotes? Should Reddit be?
I don't think the problem around social media is the "it's a feed full of trivial stuff that'll steal hours of your life", it's that you have to be on there if you want to have an active social life and not be an outsider. But if you take down facebook, instagram, twitter and tiktok, kids will find a new platform to flock to and to play their social games, bully some and make others celebrities. It's what they do, and now that the tech is here, they'll use it to do it.
I don't know how hard it is for today's kids, but I sure am glad that I went through puberty before internet was a big thing in my country.
I don’t know what I’m hoping for. I stated that in my original: “struggle with remedies.”
HN can be addictive. So can playing with legos. So can honeycombs.
But the highly mechanized addiction that occurs on some platforms is not just the baseline level addiction. It is highly engineered addiction for focused financial gain. I consider it akin to the tricks played by the tobacco industry over the years.
It's different from playing with legos though, isn't it? What makes social media so intense is the social aspect. You get validated by collecting likes, you can humiliate your opponents, you can bond with your tribe, you can fight the just war for whatever you believe in.
Sure, Facebook and friends will engineer it to make it streamlined, but I'd see it more like modern engineered food than tobacco. It's something (like eating) we do naturally and probably cannot live without (for the majority of people), they're just iterating over what we like best, but it's not artificially induced (like nicotine addiction). People play social games, and now they do it online, and you can play with millions of people instead of being limited to those who are in shouting distance.
> Social media engagement is now one of the leading causes cited in divorces.
Where'd you find this?
There are multiple articles written about it [0-2], but they all seem to cite the same (single) study.
[0] https://www.anylaw.com/media/2021/07/18/study-finds-that-fac...
[1] https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/facebook-has-become-a-lead...
[2] https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/social-cheating-inc...
What is the manner in which social media is causing you and your wife of nearly 30 years to have to battle divorce?
I interpret this to mean that social media addiction (or what have you) is an additional burden to deal with when doing the day to day maintenance work of a relationship. Like, it's probably harder to do fun things together (especially spontaneously) when the other person is already entertained on their phone. Or maybe a partner is letting their household chores slip because they are spending too much time on their phone. (So then the other person has to be the asshole asking them to do it, which can seem infantilizing and create resentment on both sides). And making the relationship harder will push you more towards the "divorce" realm than otherwise.
I've had friends mention the deterioration of their older parent's relationship due to phone addiction. One said her mother couldn't even properly enjoy a vacation because going out dinner dinner or a hike required putting the phone away for too long. Basically it is similar to the problems caused by any other addiction.
.. as a Seattle dad .. I fucking love this awkward yet clearly precedent-setting case. I know most of the board and the majority of us are fed up and taking the power we have to task and accountability. This has been in the works for over four years and we know the end game: new laws, adopted by other cities and states. .. it’s been a clearly focused project for over 4 years now. One of my friends is on the board. I knew it was coming Q1 2023 and glad they stayed on task. A bevy of mental health experts are core to this - so due diligence. I don’t know the layout of the legal team, but was told they have put this thru the ringer - the goal has always been a legal precedent, then actual legislation then adopted by other entities as well. The Portland School District has a parallel lawsuit as well. The pushback will be WELL propagandized and vilified. I can only imagine what garbage FOX will spew.
Both you as a parent and the board had the power to stop children from using social media; or at least severely restrict it. Yet you choose to waste years on a very low probability lawsuit?
The lawsuit is going to be dismissed due to lack of standing.
TikTok offers their service to people they know to be teenagers, during school hours, when those teenagers are inside the school building (with TikTok's tracking of users, they surely know it.)
I don't expect this lawsuit to succeed, but it's not entirely without merit and I do think the school district has some standing if for no other reason than because TikTok is serving videos to, and accepting uploads from, students who are actually in school.
Every school system sets its own vacation days, and home schooled kids don't share the same set hours or days as the local school districts.
I don't doubt that the harms are real, but I do suspect that you are putting an unreasonable burden on tik tok here.
What I'm actually most curious about is when did schools start letting kids have cell phones during the school day? I was in school roughly just before smart phones were a thing, but texting was starting to become popular if you could get a plan that didn't charge per text.
The expectation was your phone stayed in your locker if you brought it to school, and anyone caught with one during class or in the hallways during class hours would have it taken away until the day was over.
> Every school system sets its own vacation days,
You're missing the part where TikTok knows where their users are, and know when a thousand kids are clustered together inside of a known school building in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. It's not rocket science to figure out those kids are in school. They know it.
> home schooled kids
The inability to perfectly know when a kid might be "in school" doesn't make much difference in my eye. They could easily detect it most of the time, and probably do, but choose to serve those kids anyway.
>They could easily detect it most of the time, and probably do, but choose to serve those kids anyway.
Seems ridiculous to push this responsibility on companies and app engineers. It isn't society's job to child proof the world for distracted children. Parents and guardians have to take the reigns and deal with discipline issues directly.
This is an interesting point. I agree with you that TikTok clearly knows what is going on and could disable accesss during school hours if they wanted to. Although not exactly a parallel, there are already laws protecting children from tobacco advertising near schools.
I wrote a similar comment below. This will still be a very difficult case to win. No one ever went after Nintendo even though they knew their devices were being used during class time. AT&T can also see teens texting in class but also do not have a legal responsibility to prevent this. Parents already have a tool-- parental controls-- to prevent social media use during school hours.
If the plaintiff can show that social media companies went out of their way to specifically target children during school hours (versus any other time of the day), there might be a stronger case. But ultimately the courts will not write new laws. This is the job of the legislature. Definitely write your congressperson.
Since Google/Apple have location services data on the phone, map databases that know where schools are, and the ability to limit use of specific apps or the entire device, do you figure they are similarly liable? It would seem a lot easier to have the platforms solve the problem once than delegate it out to be solved a millions times by every app in the store.
Or the schools could make and enforce rules without relying on tech companies to make decisions for them? This is so ridiculous.
Yes, I think they should be.
It seems completely wrong to me that every app should have a legal obligation to track the location of children to find out if they are at school.
To me the whole enterprise is totalitarian, but if I were trying to build a solution, it would look something like this:
1) Add a school control mode to the devices, similar to existing parental control mode. In this mode the school can block categories of content or usage during school hours. The school administrators don’t get to look at the student browsing data.
2) Schools can enforce a policy that unenrolled devices are banned from campus. The device can make it easy to check using something like NFC or an indicator accessible from the lockscreen (similar to the existing medical ID).
> It seems completely wrong to me that every app should have a legal obligation to track the location of children to find out if they are at school.
Start with the big social media apps, then work from there if the general problem persists (I think it won't.)
From what I’ve heard from relatives, a big portion of what the kids are doing on their phones these days is just messaging in iMessage/sms group chats.
.. it’s been a clearly focused project for over 4 years now. A colleague is on the board..A bevy of mental health experts are core to this - so due diligence. I don’t know the layout of the legal team, but was told they have put this thru the ringer - the goal has always been a legal precedent, then actual legislation, then adoption by other entities as well. The Portland School District has a parallel lawsuit as well on the tails of ours.
.. I suggest this light reading: https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=7.48
Thank you for the link! The evidence of negative mental effects is definitely there. Labeling social media a public nuisance is an interesting strategy.
I am skeptical that courts will be willing to make a leap to follow this reasoning, especially when social media is so pervasive outside the school setting. Kids used to read magazines during class and this was never considered a public nuisance. Neither was Pokémon. These are arguably less harmful, but parents can also use parental controls to restrict access during school hours if they wish to do so.
It might be interesting to explore this through the lens of tobacco marketing in schools, though I’m sure this was already considered.
How many parents are using parental controls? Do they work? (I’m not a parent and am genuinely curious).
Is there a specific law that these firms are supposed to have violated? (Does there need to be? I am not a lawyer.)
Does the school district have standing to sue on behalf of the students? (Is the injury that they pay more for mental health services for students?)
I’m genuinely curious. There’s a surface analogy to the cases against opioid manufacturers and distributors, but those are controlled substances whereas YouTube is clearly not.
There isn’t even a clear causal effect of the from YouTube -> depression, IMO. Research on this has been quite low quality.
And what about the role of the parents who are the owners of the phones on which their children run TikTok?
Again genuine curiosity here, not trying to be a jerk.
The school district isn't suing "on behalf" of students. The school district claim is that it has standing to sue on it's own behalf due to specific harms it has suffered as a direct result of these companies actions (e.g. increased mental healthcare costs.)
The geek wire article mentions that they are referring to the public nuisance law.
Probably would have been more cost effective to have worked with Amazon in Seattle on the Kids launcher on the Fire OS fork of Android (the one that merges the App Store and Launcher for the kids).
It's not safe to allow school administrators to jam and deny students' (possibly distracting) communications at least on their personal devices, eh?
Perhaps students could voluntarily submit to an App Launcher for focusing on school that deprioritizes content streams that haven't been made educational while attending unpaid conpulsory education programs under threat of prosecution for truancy, not nuisance.
Non- FireOS Android forks have the "Digital Wellbeing" tools for helping oneself focus despite persistent distractions that will always exist IRL.
.. I appended above and addressed what you are asking.
This seems like the most likely section, though I am not a lawyer:
https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=7.48.120
If so, one issue this might turn on is the establishment of a causal link between something these firms are doing and a negative health impact.
That’s going to be extremely difficult to establish and is far, far from established. I’m not unsympathetic to this case but I am not that optimistic.
Happy to hear a legal perspective though.
If they spent an equivalent amount of effort on figuring out how to manage the busses out offer classes to talented kids all the residents would be better off
Similar (ish) lawsuits, (like the one against Juuls) haven't been dismissed. What makes you think this one is different?
What is the school doing about evidence that attending in-person school increases suicide? That seems like a much easier issue to tackle and well-within their remit. (Legit question as you seem well informed about their current thought process)
They will just argue that the parents should not give children phones, which is actually something I agree with.
We need coordinated parenting on when to give children these devices.
obvious enthusiasm for a legal action by multiple teams of people on salary for 4+ years, does not make it effective or have standing
> A bevy of mental health experts are core to this - so due diligence.
He said the name of ~the movie~ himself!
I'm certain that social media is contributing to worse outcomes with those at risk of mental health issues. But what can be done about it?
It's like trying to keep your kids from mixing with the wrong crowd.
Teenagers have changed. There are a load of interesting stats about what has changed.
From 1994 to now.
Percent with a driver's licence has gone from 84.7% to 72.7%, tried alcohol fro 81% to 66.1%, gone on dates from 83% to 58% and had a job from 71.7% to 55%
https://twitter.com/AlecStapp/status/1611500829441138688
Maybe less dates and less independence from adults is what is driving up depression. But it might be harder to sue parents.
"Why aren't parents getting kids to drink more"
Its probably not that but more that teens are socializing less and spending more time on things like homework.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/20/the-way-u-s...
>had a job from 71.7% to 55%
Middle-aged immigrants (both illegal and legal aliens) have taken many jobs that teenagers held in the past, food preparers and deliverers at restaurants being a notable example.
teenage pregnancies, time outside, sex, and general freedom are all down
So the public schools will turn a profit from the increasingly depressed teens... and then what? Business as usual with some bonus cash for counseling services? What's the real goal here? Precedent?
I don't see the (non-monetary) benefit unless there are new laws introduced that severely restrict how social media is allowed to operate or outright ban various addictive techniques employed by their platforms (which will need to be constantly amended because they'll come with addictive ideas faster than they can possibly be proven addictive).
> What's the real goal here? Precedent?
Precedent is a big one, but it is also possible that the court could order these companies to take specific steps to redress this harm.
Had any of this harm been physical, everybody would be cheering to combat it. But because it's mental, it's "not real", right?
Behavioral scientists can plot any metric against the last decade and it spectacularly deviates from what came before it, in a bad way. A seismic shift.
It's a problem. A massively complicated problem where regulation will be tricky. For the record, even Zuckerberg himself has practically begged for regulation in response to issues affecting teen girls specifically.
> even Zuckerberg himself has practically begged for regulation in response to issues affecting teen girls specifically.
I recall this being criticized as Zuckerberg cynically trying to create an anti-competitive regulatory moat around Facebook. Seems plausible to me, I have a hard time believing that Zuck has a single sincere and benevolent bone in his body.
But even if he has cynical motivations for proposing it, that doesn't mean the idea itself is bad.
With some (pending) regulation, there's indeed the risk that they require such advanced tech that only Big Tech can comply. I don't know if that is the case here.
I see Zuckerberg as a sociopath in a pressure cooker, a highly competitive environment where each decision has an outsized impact. For sure he morally has a piss poor track record, but I still don't think of people like him as villain.
I don't think he gets up in the morning and thinks "how can I ruin the mental health of teenage girls today"? It's possible that he wants to do the right thing, or a neutral thing, or really does want industry wide clarity on this matter.
The way I think of Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Musk is that it's a system issue. You can play evil billionaire whack-a-mole but new ones will pop up.
School attendance is reliably associated with student suicide rate. We know it's causal because the association tracks random variations in the school year (snow days and make-up days, teacher strikes, differences in district calendars, etc). So forgive me if I believe their concern to be less than genuine.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/childrens-risk-of...
Attending school might increase the suicide rate, but education doubtlessly has more than enough upsides to offset that harm.
TikTok though? I don't think so. No upside of TikTok can compare to the upside of receiving an education.
How many educated kids are worth 1 suicide?
I mean this quite seriously because utilitarian body count calculations are made by the US government all the time, especially in the context of transportation infrastructure. What's a good multiplyer? 10000 kids educated per suicide?
Even if suicides were a thousand times more common, I think the advantages of an educated population would still favor keeping schools open.
Of course if practical measures can be taken today which suppress the suicide rate while still compelling kids to receive educations, I support those measures. But to do away with compulsory schooling to suppress the suicide rate is throwing the baby out with the bath water. With TikTok, there is no baby. It's all bath water.
In my experience, which in unfortunately way too much, people commit suicide when they feel trapped in a bad situation. It’s hard to think of a more likely scenario than someone that’s having a bad time at school. I hope every parent out there starts to offers up online schooling as “always an option.” It would have saved some friends of mine.
Yes. NBER recently published some similar stats in the context of the lockdowns:
> suicides among 12-to-18-year-olds are highest during months of the school year and lowest during summer months
> returning [post lockdowns] from online to in-person schooling was associated with a 12-to-18 percent increase teen suicides.
What is it that you're suggesting? That school attendance is a cause of suicide? That can't be... because if so then it's a miracle for all of us who made it before hand that we survived such a dangerous place and built the modern world and all.
Understand that any time you leave your house you run the risk of having a bad day. So for kids, who regularly leave their house for school, it makes sense that the primary factor leading to a "bad day" for a kid would occur in or around campus. And I can totally believe there's a causal link between when someone chooses to commit suicide and the kind of day they were having.
I'm just not sure what you're suggesting. Are we all just supposed to stay home? That's not workable. You have to face the world.
Also you take a chance every time you get in your car to go anywhere. Doesn't mean we should avoid automobiles.
I'm not trying to be sarcastic... Just trying to understand the angle you're after with this stat.
You seem to be assuming that they can't be concerned with more than one problem simultaneously. You also seem to be assuming that addressing social media problems in schools won't help address the suicide problem. You also seem to be assuming that they aren't already doing something to address the suicide problem.
Unlike the entirety of the tech system, the school system is ipso facto in charge of the school system's own operation. I'm sure Altria is working real hard on a non-cancerous cigarette too.
So far, two comments saying this is grandstanding by the school board.
If you replace social media with drugs and high schoolers with homeless people, wouldn't it be more typical for people to be saying that elected officials aren't doing ANYTHING!
What's the difference?
I have read enough to know that these social media companies are employing behavioral scientists that are attempting to make their products addictive. And, I believe teenage brains are particularly succeptible. So this doesn't seem like grandstanding to me.
I am not a lawyer, but this seems like the school board have no standing (in the legal sense) to be filing this lawsuit. I do not believe that social media companies have the duty of care to the school boards to maintain kids' mental health.
Some of the things in the lawsuit are just stupid like arguing that social media causes them to need to do investigations into threats and such. You wouldn't be suing the USPS or AT&T for allowing the same thing, would you? Sure these aren't the same thing as social media, but whether a duty of care exists should be a relatively similar analysis.
Literally this. You'd have to twist yourself into a legal pretzel to somehow claim that because teachers act in loco parentis for children in their care that now somehow their supervisors have power of attorney over their charges.
This is one of those cases where the idiots involved deserve to get hit with a huge fine for filing a frivolous lawsuit. No, not the school district, but those involved. Personally.
It's an easy pretzel for teachers/school administrators to tie themselves into, because these people are on the frontline of witnessing the ways in which parents can neglect and abuse their kids. It's easy for teachers to fall into believing themselves / the state a better steward of children than their own parents.
I'm not sure if that is the case, but if it is, it is the educational equivalent of the police seeing everyone as a threat because they deal constantly with the law breakers of society.
It's not a perfect analogy, but I think it's very similar. Teachers have to interact with all students, not just the ones who have trouble, but the ones who have trouble occupy a greater portion of the attention of teachers. So teachers spend an inordinate amount of time dwelling on the matter of neglect and abuse. The saddest most depressing cases stay in the minds of teachers for a long time, while the normal well cared for students are soon forgotten.
How does "power of attorney" have any relevance here?
The argument is simply that the school district has suffered damages from specific behavior by the social media companies, that has nothing to with an ability to make decisions on the student's behalf.
Having read the complaint, no, it doesn't have relevance here (obviously I made that claim prior to reading the complaint), but what they do assert is even worse: They're trying to claim that use of Facebook, Tiktok, etc and consequent behavioral issues among students constitutes a nuisance. The phrase "void for vagueness" would seem to apply here.
>How does “power of attorney” have any relevance here?
It doesn’t and that’s Earl’s point. That would be the best way for them to have any standing, but it just doesn’t line up.
It wasn't, actually. I made that comment before I read the complaint. The statutory basis of their complaint is that Facebook constitutes some specie of nuisance, hence my later comment that even if we took their factual assertions at face value the charge asserted should be void for vagueness.
>seems like the school board have no standing
That was exactly my reaction. If Bob Ferguson (WA AG) wanted to pursue such a case, he / the state would have standing - and as far as I know, the school board asking the state and getting other school boards involved in such a case would be the more powerful approach. This is Seattle though, with its particular political leanings, and/or it could also be a bit of a Hail Mary - do this to show frustration in hopes that the AG or similar parties will take action.
.. chiming in: Bob has indeed been looped in since this suit was on the table four years ago - and participated in person to the 3 meetings where this suit was on the agenda. I have heard his comments and discussion first hand. I know there to be at least two of his staff handling this suit. It is common for these types of well-executed lawsuits where the named-party is a public entity - for the relevant legislative office to NOT present a public statement until several weeks after filing the suit. I can assure you that the AG or representative thereof, will do so in the coming weeks.
Doesn't surprise me given his previous suit against Facebook (IE: The reach of social media is an active concern of the state). Likewise, Bob and I have mutual friends and this very much sounds like the kind of thing he'd have the pulse on. For that matter, it sounds like you have some hands-on info here - maybe you and I run in the same meatspace circles ;-D.
Where are you getting this "duty of care" thing? That doesn't seem remotely similar to any of the legal arguments discussed in the article.
> You wouldn't be suing the USPS or AT&T for allowing the same thing, would you?
Those aren't analogous companies at all. Social media companies don't just deliver content, they promote specific content and optimize thier platforms to increase engagement.
I assumed this lawsuit was a negligence one. It's not, it's under public nuisance laws. I still don't understand how the school board should get damages paid given they aren't "the public", and they didn't have any of their rights violated.
> Those aren't analogous companies at all. Social media companies don't just deliver content, they promote specific content and optimize thier platforms to increase engagement.
A school investigates all threats equally regardless of how they are communicated. Whether they are mailed, sent via SMS, called in or sent on social media should not matter.
I think it would be a bit odd to see a school district suing drug dealers. Seeing as weed is legal in Seattle, could/should the Seattle public schools sue local [state-]legal weed stores for selling product that will inevitably find their way into the hands of teenagers? I suppose they could, but it would be surprising to see.
This said, I have a special hatred for TikTok so I wish the Seattle schools good luck in their crazy endeavor.
Yet, South Carolina schools suing e-cigarette manufactures:
https://www.postandcourier.com/columbia/more-sc-school-distr...
Legally it kind of makes sense because schools have a responsibility to ensure the welfare of children. Thus kids vaping or checking TickTok at school is a problem for the school system. But they also list “increased security staff time spent addressing discipline and supervision issues, and increased counselor time spent speaking to addicted students about this epidemic.”
I think if there were evidence of targeting children with advertising, deliberately locating near schools or other intent, then yes, you could see a lawsuit.
>these social media companies are employing behavioral scientists
Companies have employed behavioral scientists for at least a century now. Cigarette companies never got in trouble for hiring psychologists to devise their advertising (addiction triggers), but for the damage their products did. They could invent a new rule against exploiting human psychology but that does not have a precedent of illegality.
Cigarette companies were explicitly banned from advertising to children for this exact reason. I don’t think this is a good example, because if they’re comparable then social media should be banned from advertising to children also.
If hiring psychologists was why they were banned from advertising to children, why can Mattel advertise to children?
For the reason that their products are harmful, not that they had hired psychologists.
Yeah that's my whole point, psychological mass manipulation is legal.
> never got in trouble for hiring psychologists to devise their advertising
When is the last time you saw Joe Camel?
If homeless people were legally confined in some government-run institution and were able to use drugs inside that institution, how would you react? I would react by saying that the government institution that confines our homeless people is doing a shitty job. I also say SPS is doing a shitty job.
I think the premise that no social media = no depressed kids is pretty weak, imo.
Also, what's social media? Are messaging apps not social media?
This feels like another one of those 'violent video games are bad' arguments.
> I think the premise that no social media = no depressed kids is pretty weak, imo.
That's clearly not the premise.
> Also, what's social media? Are messaging apps not social media?
The lawsuit makes specific claims about specific behavior by specific companies.
How would the school board sue drug cartels or hobos? Those are only slightly more ridiculous than suing TikTok.
Seattle schools could sue the Uncle Ike's pot shop chain that operates openly and mostly legally in Seattle.
The difference is that we aren't talking about drug addiction here? And I mean drawing parallels between hard drugs and social media is just a matter of opinion. Like if you replace basically any possible debate with with homeless people and drugs you would probably get people asking for something to be done, so yeah I guess?
Unclear why the school has standing, except they have to deal with depressed students, but doesn't everybody? Can Starbucks sue because it's become harder to find cheerful baristas?
They have standing because its a statutory tort and because and to the extent thar they allege the kind of action and injury that the statute makes compensable.
You seem to be imaging the kind of analysis done for a suit that is not based on a statute providing liability, but on a conflict of laws trying to negate or enjoin a government action for violating a controlling law that does not provide a explicit right of action to the plaintiff to sue, but that’s not necessary when a statute provides an explicit cause of action.
Their alleged standing is predicated on a single count of violating the Washington Public Nuisance Law, RCW 7.48.010 (see page 86 of their complaint[1])[2]. So their torturous logic is that somehow not only are the defendants' services addictive, but that the addiction thereof spurs students to engage in violent and/or disruptive behaviors that interferes with the enjoyment of school property and the safety of its employees (thus violating RCW 7.48.010 et seq.), thereby giving these clowns standing to sue.
Even if we take their claims at face value that the defendants knowingly created products that are demonstrably addictive, materially contributing to the conditions that occasioned this suit, the offences named in that section are unconstitutionally vague and, to the extent that it is those vague portions are those asserted in the cause of action, should be unenforceable.
I'm having a hard time believing Seattle School District No 1 actually thinks they'll succeed on the "merits" of this case, and am inclined to agree that this is nothing more than a publicity stunt on their part to call attention to a "problem" that has a fairly clear solution: students with behavioral issues tied to use of social networking services that are disruptive to school functions can and should be expelled. Problem solved.
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[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.31...
> a "problem" that has a fairly clear solution: students with behavioral issues tied to use of social networking services that are disruptive to school functions can and should be expelled. Problem solved.
That's not the problem, and that would be a poorly targeted and illegal solution if it were. You can't expel a child from public school for having a mental health problem.
And I'm sure you can point to the statute that violates. I'll wait.
> And I'm sure you can point to the statute that violates. I'll wait.
Federally, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1974 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Besides that, Washington State Constitution, Art. IX, § 1.
I think you are confused about what "standing" means, it is the "legal capicity to sue". It generally means being directly harmed in a manner that the court can redress with a favorable decision.
So it is quite possible that the court will say SPS has standing but decide against them because of the vagueness of the public nuisance law.
No, I'm quite clear about what standing means, thank you. They're predicating their standing on this being a violation of a nuisance statute. I didn't say they don't have standing under that statute, just that the statute is unconstitutionally vague.
> just that the statute is unconstitutionally vague.
Half of your constitution is unconstitutionally vague
What sort of mental gymnastics does one have to do to place blame on a third party when you have to seek, install the app and actively engage with? What is preventing the parents from parenting?
School officials are no stranger to mental gymnastics, there are a ton of problems with school systems.
It’s more indoctrination than anything else at this point.
(Honest question, I don't understand how the law applies globally to the internet)
Given that TikTock is Chinese, what happens if they lose a court case in the US? How can anyone force them to pay up or change their ways?
I assume the only outcome is either "pay up" or be banned in that jurisdiction? (Assuming they lose)
I can't help thinking this is like the all the three letter US agencies trying to force US law onto countries like Sweden for The Pirate Bay.
TikTok has business operations in the US (including offices and thousands of employees).
There's plenty of TikTok assets in the US to seize. They have an office in Culver City, for example
Given this particular court case is brought by Public Schools in Seattle, WA , does having assets in a totally different state even matter?
It's not like the Federal Government is suing them.
I fully support this lawsuit, and I also fully support society taking a stand against algorithmic social media and platforms like YouTube. Moreover, I am saying this as a content creator myself who makes money!
The effects of algorithms trained to make the mind addicted are too subtle and too powerful to leave it to individuals to make their own choices about a healthy level of social media use. Moreover, most people already agree that Facebook and YouTube are not really healthy.
If implementing manipulative algorithms were restricted and made illegal with extremely heavy fines, it would improve all of society, and everyone would be happier except the executives of such companies and the people being paid outrageous salaries to make such platforms addictive. As a content creator, if the amount of money I made decreased a little, I would gladly accept that if it meant everyone else spent less time on the computer.
I am sickened at tech companies. Although I love programming, and worked as a programmer, I have vowed to never contribute a single line of code that could support such practices, and I suggest all programmers to do the same!
"The effects of [X] are too subtle and too powerful to leave it to individuals to make their own choices about a healthy level of [X]. Moreover, most people already agree that [X] are not really healthy."
I wholeheartedly disagree with the type of argument you are making.
> The effects of [X] are too subtle and too powerful
X is not an inanimate substance like cocaine. Instead it's you playing poker against the house, when they can see your cards. It's you VS a massive spying machine and 100 PHDs in psychology, and they also will illegally use your data on the side.
A lot of people would. A lot of people like the idea that everyone should be able to make a free choice without regulation. No doubt my point of view is contentious and many people don't like it...not surprised.
That's true of society among many issues. Some people also disagree with disincentives on smoking such as mandatory labels on cigarette packages (which we have in my country at least).
Most societies control all sorts of things that are bad for the majority such as murder, guns, cocaine, switchblades, assault weapons, etc. I believe social media and AI should be on that list also. I get that you don't agree with that and I respect that.
I don’t doubt that some kids are negatively harmed by social media.
However, I’m a photographer that does high school senior shoots. I follow some of my clients, and the amount of support every single teen I’ve looked at gets on everything they post is astounding. It doesn’t matter what they look like, if they post a picture they’ll have dozens or hundreds of comments telling them how gorgeous they are. Even the guys get some, though not as much.
And yeah, it’s all a bit silly and vapid when everyone is saying that to everyone. You know it still feels good. I certainly could have used someone telling me I was attractive back in high school…as a guy the girl’s hints were a bit lost on me.
Hey I’m just going to throw it out there - it’s weird and kinda creepy for an adult to follow a non-relative teenager on social media for just about any reason.
I always ask before I send an invite, and it's on my business account - not a personal account.
Plus every once in a while I have one where we get to know each other quite well and it's fun to see where their lives take them.
I know of women photographers that literally go on trips with their "senior models," so I think me following them on social media is pretty tame in comparison.
I disagree. It can certainly be creepy but cross generational friendships are not inherently creepy or bad. Meeting people where they socialize is a key part of friendship.
I’m sure this attitude isn’t a reason at all for why kids have poor relationships with adults.
No one made your kids use their product, good luck.
This lawsuit is an embarrassment using a compilation of anti social media arguments including misleading ones where the truth is twisted to make an argument.
>Meta also delays the time it takes to load the feed. “This is because without that three-second delay, Instagram wouldn’t feel variable.”
This isn't a fact. They are literally quoting speculation from Vice while making it seem like an official quote from Meta. Twitter and Instagram take time to load the feed because it's a nontrivial operation. I'd expect adding fake delays to your app will just cause people to get annoyed and use your app less.
> They are literally quoting speculation from Vice while making it seem like an official quote from Meta.
They literally provide the exact source of the quote. It is speculation but it isn't unreasonable since we know they've made similar types if decisions to maximize engadgement.
While they quote the article they don't make it clear who they are quoting or that it is speculation. Yes, one can check the article to see if the quote is coming from information from Meta, but one shouldn't have to.
>we know they've made similar types if decisions to maximize engadgement
Name a similar decision. The closest thing to this I can think of is from gacha games and not social media sites.
.. like I said above: ".. you've much to learn on the tenaciousness of a highly focused legal team - which is core to this lawsuit."
That doesn't change my opinion that they are either arguing in bad faith or they are incompetent in the argument they are making.
Political grandstanding by school board members eyeing higher offices is abhorrent.
No grandstanding in my opinion. Social media is a very dangerous and addictive drug that is difficult to police. It should be heavily regulated as it's destroying society.
> Social media is a very dangerous and addictive drug that is difficult to police. It should be heavily regulated as it's destroying society.
100% agree, but
> No grandstanding
It's definitely grandstanding. Even though they're right about social media, it's definitely grandstanding. A cause being just doesn't mean people aren't grandstanding about it. This is grandstanding because it's a public stunt that is very unlikely to bear any fruit besides bolstering the reputation of the people doing it.
.. you've much to learn on the tenaciousness of a highly focused legal team - which is core to this lawsuit.
Saying ".. you've much to learn" isn't evidence or an explanation of anything. If you have something you can explain, go ahead.
Well, I earnestly do wish you luck. I hope you prove me a pessimist.
Has there ever been a non-specious charge of destroying society? How can social media destroy society when rock music, jazz, women wearing pants, pool, single mothers, and novels have already done so?
If the drug is distributed by, controlled by, the American govt using its tech companies, such a drug is fine. The moment, the control goes to Chinese, yes, it is a big NO :)
Two of the three companies being sued are based in the USA.
Was wondering why this made the second page