Seattle Schools Blame High-Tech Companies for Deteriorating Students’ Mental Health

The Seattle Department of Education, which unites most of the city’s public schools, has filed a lawsuit against Internet corporations, including Alphabet, Meta (recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation), Snap and ByteDance. The lawsuit accuses the corporations that their social networks negatively affect the mental health of students and that these social networks were specifically designed to cause addiction. The lawsuit was reported today, January 9, by a number of media outlets, including Reuters. The lawsuit was filed in the District Court for the Western District of Washington last Friday.

“Defendants successfully exploited the vulnerability of the youth psyche, trapping tens of millions of schoolchildren across the country in a positive feedback loop leading to the overuse and abuse of the defendants’ social media,” the lawsuit says. According to the plaintiffs, all this worsens the mental health of students, leads to problems in school, so that in the end, schools have to hire psychologists to work with these problems, create resources that warn about the dangers of excessive use of social networks, etc. The plaintiffs seek compensation for these expenses, as well as imposing fines on high-tech companies.

Google and Snap, at the request of Reuters, said they care about the mental health of users and seek advice from experts on this issue. Meta and ByteDance did not comment on the lawsuit in any way, and earlier the companies also announced their desire to create a comfortable environment for users.

Yana Rozhdestvenskaya