Social Media Failed to Warn Kids, Parents of 'Known Dangers': Suit

Meta, Snap, Google and TikTok could have avoided harming plaintiffs and their students, said a March 28 lawsuit (docket 23STCV06685) made publicly available this week in California Superior Court in Los Angeles by Baldwin, Montgomery, and Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, public schools and the state of Alabama .

The platforms failed to warn minor users and their parents of “known dangers” arising from use of their products, said the complaint. None of plaintiffs’ claims rely on treating defendants accountable for their own allegedly wrongful acts and omissions, the speech of others or attempts by defendants to restrict access to objectionable content, it said. Plaintiffs aren't alleging defendants are liable for what third parties said but for what defendants “did or did not do,” it said.

The social media platforms solicited customers, including plaintiffs and their students, “on the open market and encouraged the use of their defective apps,” alleges the complaint. The defendants offer their apps to the public with “dangerous, standardized features and designs” that students “cannot bargain to change,” it said. The defendants could have, “but purposefully failed to,” design their products to protect and avoid injury to kids and adolescent users, and they should have known adolescents’ developing brains “leave them relatively less able to delay gratification, control impulses, or resist immediately pleasurable social rewards.”

The defendants should have known excessive use of their social media platforms has “severe and wide-ranging effects” on youths’ mental and physical health, the complaint said. They also knew many of their users are under the age of 13, despite limitations set by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, the complaint alleges.

Plaintiffs seek to hold the social media companies accountable for their own alleged acts and omissions. Their claims arise from the defendants’ status as designers and marketers of “dangerously defective social media products, not as the speaker or publisher of third-party content,” the complaint said.

Schools are struggling to provide adequate mental health services due in part to the rise in students seeking the services, said the complaint. It linked an increase in the percentage of public schools reporting more students seeking mental health services since 2020 to higher social media use and higher rates of “ill-being.” Students in grades 6-12 identify depression, stress and anxiety as the most prevalent obstacles to learning, and middle- and high school students don’t get enough sleep on school nights, “the most common symptoms of excessive social media use,” it said.

The Alabama school districts participate in state programs to support mental health, said the complaint. Montgomery Public Schools maintains a “costly yet insufficient” student counseling framework that has “deepened" from the injuries inflicted by social media products, it said.

Causes of action include public nuisance and negligence. Plaintiffs seek an order that defendants’ conduct constitutes a public nuisance under Alabama law; an order requiring defendants to abate the public nuisance conduct and not engage in further actions; an award of equitable relief to fund prevention education and addiction treatment; and awards of actual, compensatory, punitive and statutory damages, plus reasonable attorneys’ fees and legal costs.