Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram over youth mental health
geekwire.com
geekwire.com
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...
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.
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?
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.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture...
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.
It’s not like kids are born with an iPhone glued to their hand.
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.
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.
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'm pretty sure I hit depression due to that, but was never diagnosed
It’s sad because somehow the idea of equal opportunity has been replaced with equalized outcomes in education.
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 wish someone would compile a list of every school district that's doing this or planning on doing it, just for public knowledge purposes
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Where'd you find this?
[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...
.. I suggest this light reading: https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=7.48
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.
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.
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 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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Start with the big social media apps, then work from there if the general problem persists (I think it won't.)
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.
We need coordinated parenting on when to give children these devices.
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.
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.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/20/the-way-u-s...
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/childrens-risk-of...
TikTok though? I don't think so. No upside of TikTok can compare to the upside of receiving an education.
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
When is the last time you saw Joe Camel?
Also, what's social media? Are messaging apps not social media?
This feels like another one of those 'violent video games are bad' arguments.
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.
This said, I have a special hatred for TikTok so I wish the Seattle schools good luck in their crazy endeavor.
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.”
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.
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.
--
[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.31...
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.
Half of your constitution is unconstitutionally vague
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.
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.
It’s more indoctrination than anything else at this point.
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.
It's not like the Federal Government is suing them.
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!
I wholeheartedly disagree with the type of argument you are making.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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 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.
>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.
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.