The (Columbus) Republic
We give a big thumbs-up emoji to Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. for deciding to join a class-action lawsuit brought by school corporations nationwide against social media companies.
BCSC Superintendent Jim Roberts noted social media brings challenges that intrude on the school day — and indeed on students’ lives. Young people spend on average more than four hours a day on social media sites such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and others.
“With no discussion, the BCSC school board voted Monday to approve a resolution to join in a class-action lawsuit,” The Republic’s Mark Webber reported. No discussion really was needed here, because everybody knows social media has an interest in hooking people and keeping them hooked, and the younger the better.
In this way, social media giants are not unlike the tobacco industry, which was only brought to heel (somewhat) after class-action litigation. Among other things, lawsuits made Big Tobacco financially responsible for some of the economic damages society assumed due to the harms resulting from smoking.
The tobacco analogy is also apt because a large body of research suggests that, particularly for young users, social media may be as addictive if not more addictive than cigarettes.
Further, social media companies have broad protections that traditional publishers do not enjoy. This shields social media companies from libel, defamation and liability concerns based on what users post, which means anything goes. As we have seen.
“Social media challenges have been labeled an issue that the country needs to take more time and dive into,” Roberts said, referring to warnings from U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy about the dangers of social media on adolescent mental health.
Evidence indicates children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content to bullying and harassment, Murthy warned last spring. Social media may also cause children to compromise on sleep, as well as lose valuable in-person time with family and friends, Murthy said.
Harvard University researchers studied social media addiction among college students and found that “social media addiction was negatively associated with the students’ mental health and academic performance and that the relation between social media addiction and mental health was mediated by self-esteem.”
And teen girls are especially vulnerable to negative impressions from social media. The CDC reported last year that a staggering 57% of teen girls said they felt sad or hopeless in 2021, up from 36% in 2011.
It’s unrealistic to expect kids (or adults) to kick the cellphone habit, though some have. After all, humans existed for thousands of years without them before iPhones debuted in 2007 — when some of our current high school seniors were infants.
It took years of frustration, regulation, litigation and legislation to force the tobacco industry to take responsibility for its actions, particularly for the reckless ways it aimed its products at young people. Schools were part of the solution decades ago. We see no reason why BCSC and other school corporations shouldn’t join in efforts to likewise hold social media giants accountable.
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