San Mateo School Board Sues YouTube, Snap, TikTok for 'Mental Health Crisis'

Powerful social media companies that yield “unmatched, highly concentrated technology in pursuit of profit” are knowingly creating an “unprecedented mental health crisis,” alleged the San Mateo County Board of Education in a Monday complaint (docket 3:23-cv-1108) against Google, Snap and TikTok in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. A similar suit was filed last week in Oakland (see 2303100049).

Minors are facing “perhaps the most serious mental health crisis they have ever faced,” said the San Mateo complaint, calling the crisis a “feature” rather than “a bug” of the defendants’ social media products. The complaint referenced President Joe Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address in which he referred to the “experiment” social media companies “are running on our children for profit.”

The defendants purposefully designed their platforms to be addictive and to deliver harmful content to youth, alleged the complaint. Excessive use of YouTube, TikTok and Snap platforms “has become ubiquitous,” and more children are struggling with mental health issues than ever before, it said. Some 99% of teens ages 13-17 used social media, 51% used social media daily, it said, citing the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry in 2018.

A steady and accelerated rise in nearly all categories of youth risk behavior from 2011 to 2021 “tracks precisely” with the growing popularity of YouTube, TikTok and Snap during the period, said the complaint. It cited a February New York Times article quoting an adolescent psychiatry expert who said there’s “no question” the dramatic increase in suicidal behavior and depression found in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is linked to social media. The number of adolescents waiting in emergency rooms for mental health treatment for suicide tripled nationwide from 2019 to 2021, it said, citing a CBS News report last month.

The complaint referenced the death of a 14-year-old London girl in 2017 after social media algorithms “forced a stream of unsolicited content to the girl that romanticized and glorified self-harm, and even instructed her not to seek any professional help.” The algorithm “kept pursuing her like a methodical predator” until she “fulfilled its commands to end her own life.” The social media company responsible “might plan to collect its marginal advertising revenue … like a bounty on her life,” the complaint said.

YouTube, which had $19 billion in advertising in 2021, has “long targeted young people” vs. older populations, said the complaint. Despite an “ineffectual” system of verifying users’ ages, YouTube sought ad revenue from brands popular with kids, including Mattel and Hasbro, claiming it was the most popular website for tweens, said the complaint. Some 95% of kids ages 13-17 use YouTube, it said.

San Mateo County schools, and others, are on the frontlines of the crisis and had to deploy “extraordinary and unprecedented resources” to protect children in their care, said the complaint. That requires school districts to divert resources from traditional teaching goals to address the crisis. In addition to the costs associated with mental health care, schools have suffered tangible harm from social media challenges, such as the “Devious Lick” challenge on TikTok that urged students to vandalize their schools, it said.

The school district is suing for public nuisance, negligence, racketeering and violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law. It seeks an order enjoining the social media platforms from engaging in further actions that contribute to public nuisance; an award of equitable relief to fund prevention education and treatment for excessive and problematic use of social media; plus actual, compensatory, punitive and other damages, and attorneys’ fees and legal costs.