Seattle Public Schools is suing the parent companies behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat. The complaint alleges that social media has played a major role in the mental health problems faced by young people and that the district has needed to allocate more resources to combat the crisis. The lawsuit joins other complaints that have been filed by families alleging the companies impacted the mental health of their children. Amanda Zhou is a reporter for the Seattle Times and has covered this issue. Yoona Park is a Portland-based partner with Keller Rohrback, the law firm representing the school district. They both join us to discuss what’s happening.
Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The largest school district in the pacific Northwest is suing the largest social media companies in the country. On Friday Seattle Public Schools filed suit against the folks behind Snapchat, YouTube, Tiktok, Instagram and Facebook. They argue that the youth mental health crisis is no accident but instead is the result “of the defendant’s deliberate choices and affirmative actions to design and market their social media platforms to attract youth.” Yoona Park is a Portland-based partner with a law firm, Keller Rohrback and a part of the team that filed this lawsuit. She joins us now to talk about it. Yoona Park, welcome. Thanks for joining us.
Yoona Park: Hi, Dave. Thanks for having me.
Miller: Thanks for joining us. What led the district to sue?
Park: Well, Dave, I think you mentioned the youth mental health crisis that is being experienced all over the nation really. But Seattle Public Schools is not immune. There’s research confirming that social media is playing a major role in causing all sorts of mental health problems in youth. Specifically it’s that the excessive and problematic use of social media is harmful to mental health and to behaviors, and is associated with things like increased depression, anxiety, low self esteem, eating disorders and suicide.
And so this lawsuit is really about holding the social media companies responsible for what is not accidental. It’s the design of their platforms and products to be ever more increasingly addictive to children and to teens in this country. And we are seeking to hold them responsible and to stop them from engaging in these business practices.
Miller: What’s the evidence that the work of these companies to make their products ever more addictive is also the kind of business practice that’s leading to the mental health problems that you’re talking about? I mean, it’s one thing to say that they’re designed to have them always be used. It’s another to say that design is itself leading to all of these harms.
Park: As alleged in the complaint, there’s a whole bunch of statistics and facts about internal documents. But essentially, I think the key is to making these platforms unavoidable and addictive and when we say they’re targeted towards youth, it’s with these company’s understanding that there is a certain type of content that is particularly enticing to youth and that sucks them in. I think one of the reasons social media is so harmful in kids and teens, obviously, is that it encourages really unhealthy comparisons and puts kids into this feedback loop. For example, kids seeing other kids posting things are likely to engage in harmful comparisons, especially when the kids that are posting are kids that people perceive to be popular or on the inside of a crowd.
I think what we are seeing internally these companies is it’s intentional, it’s awareness, the identification of these groups of children and teens as being sort of the ideal market to hook them early because it adds to the profit and creates a pipeline of users for the long term. So I think, in terms of specifics, it’s everything from these companies understanding what types of content is more attractive to these age groups, to things that are shocking as sort of a recognition internally that these companies are responsible for measurable increases in things like body dysmorphia and depression and thoughts of suicide.
Miller: How much is the evidence that you’re using this lawsuit connected to the information provided by the former Facebook employee turned whistleblower Francis Haugen?
Park: I think that’s one small part of the allegations. As you know, the allegations relate to five different defendants. We’re talking about, in popular parlance, Facebook , Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok and YouTube. So I think the whistleblower you’re talking about refers specifically to the allegations about Meta. But this complaint is 100 pages long. And a lot of it is about the specific allegations with regards to each specific company.
Miller: I can imagine a tech responding by saying something like plenty of young people do use our sites with no visible problems. If some young people do, if some kids do then their parents should do better by helping them to limit access. How would you respond?
Park: Obviously, parents are responsible as are all adults in any young person’s life for shielding them from harmful things. But parents aren’t really responsible for designing these platforms to make them more attractive and more addictive to these target audiences. We aren’t responsible for that. And really the deck is stacked against us in terms of our ability to fight these platforms who are very intentionally designing these things to be addictive to our children.
Miller: You’ve been involved in litigation brought separately by 19 Oregon school districts against e-cigarette company Juul. I should note that your firm has also represented Seattle public schools on this same issue against Juul. Do you see a connection between these suits: one against e-cigarette makers and the other against social media companies?
Park: I do, in the sense that really we’re talking about companies that are intentionally targeting a certain audience. Both cases are ultimately about protecting our kids. These things are not incidental or accidental results of casual use. I’m a lawyer. I’m involved in those cases, but at the same time, I happen to be a parent of a 13 and 16 year old. So I am seeing, at home, some of the real life results that can happen. And my 13 year old doesn’t even have a phone. But going back to your original question, I think, yes, absolutely, there is a connection between companies like Juul who really designed their products to be especially attractive and colorful and flavorful in a way that appealed to young children specifically, and the social media companies that we’re talking about here.
Miller: What exactly is the district asking for? What would satisfy the district?
Park: I think, first and foremost, the district is really seeking to hold these companies responsible and accountable for what they are doing. So I think the first and foremost concern is stopping these businesses from engaging in these practices that are targeting our youth. But obviously there are intense resources that are being put into all sorts of mental health issues at our schools. There are increased counselors and therapists and programming that has to be designed. And I think, ultimately, we want the bad behavior to stop. We want the companies to fix the problem that they have created.
Miller: You’re a lawyer and a parent, not a programmer. But I’m wondering, taking a step back, if you think there could be a social media network that young people or anybody would want to use, that wouldn’t have the destructive qualities that are alleged in this suit. Is that even possible or is this suit explicitly or implicitly saying that social media itself cannot be a good force for individuals?
Park: That’s a tough question, Dave. I would say that I think social media can be done in the right way. It’s just that in this case, in this sort of situation, the research that is studying the effects of social media on the brain, especially the young brain, have said that it’s really exploiting the same circuitry that gambling and recreational drugs are. So it’s increasing you to sort of hit that button and come back. And to come back for content that maybe you and I are not necessarily attracted to. Right, but like my kid might be.
So I do think there are ways for these companies absolutely to change their practices so that they’re not going after the most vulnerable kids and teens who are really struggling with very, very serious issues.
Miller: Yoona Park thanks very much.
Park: Thank you. Dave.
Miller: Yoona Park is a partner with a law firm Keller Rohrback and a member of the team that filed the lawsuit on behalf of Seattle Public Schools against the country’s largest social media companies.
For more on the context of the suit, I’m joined by Amanda Zhou, a reporter for the Seattle Times. Amanda, welcome.
Amanda Zhou: Hi, glad to be here.
Miller: Thanks for joining us. How have these social media companies, the defendants, responded to this lawsuit?
Zhou: We’ve only heard back from the companies behind Snapchat and Google. Both of those companies sort of said there’s pending litigation. They can’t really address a lot of the specifics, but both of them sort of highlighted recent measures. They’ve changed their app to make it safer for kids, in their view. Stuff like this includes more parental control, limiting how much time they can use the app, limiting what kind of contact kids can have [and] what certain types of content shows up. And they also say that they’ve increased more resources on their apps, working with mental health organizations to provide resources and hotlines. Whether these measures actually work is a different story, but that’s what Snapchat and Google said.
Miller: Can you give us a sense for the context in the schools here? I mean, how are students in Seattle Public Schools, specifically, faring right now?
Zhou: One thing that I thought was interesting in this lawsuit is that it sort of comes during a time when there has been more alarm bells going off about the situation around youth mental health. There is evidence to show that there was already increasing amounts of anxiety, hopelessness among students even before the pandemic. But years of digital schooling and isolation. just sort of made it all worse. In Seattle, that’s really caught the attention of politicians as they’ve sighted more emergency room visits, having to do with suicide attempts or psychiatric issues and also more hospitalizations. And then also, something I thought was interesting is in the lawsuit, they specifically cited their own surveys that show that students have felt more hopeless in the last couple of years.
Miller: Well, I wonder if that might be one of the challenges of this lawsuit. The shocks and enforced distance and forced separation of the pandemic could be pointed to as the most serious culprit here. Do you have a sense for whether anybody can separate social media effects from pandemic effects, in terms of this mental health crisis?
Zhou: Yeah, I feel like that’s the question of the suit. There’s a little bit of column A and column B here. I think these things are all related, which is that we did see isolation during the pandemic. People were using digital schooling more. That’s more screen time. probably more access to Instagram, all these apps we’ve been talking about. What exactly causes what versus what correlates with what, is going to be a question for the courts.
Miller: Amanda Zhou, thanks very much.
Zhou: Thanks so much.
Miller: Amanda Zhou is a reporter for the Seattle Times. She joined us to talk about the lawsuit filed on Friday in U. S. District Court by Seattle Public Schools against the companies behind Snapchat, Youtube, Tiktok, Instagram and Facebook.
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