Seattle School District Sues Google, Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok for Causing Teen ‘Mental Health Crisis’

Last week, Seattle Public Schools filed a lawsuit against a litany of social media companies—including Meta, YouTube, and Snapchat—alleging that the platforms’ supposedly harmful behavior toward teenage users violates Washington state’s public nuisance law.

“By designing, marketing, promoting, and operating their platforms in a manner intended to maximize the time youth spend on their respective platforms—despite knowledge of the harms to youth from their wrongful conduct—Defendants directly facilitated the widespread, excessive, and habitual use of their platforms and the public nuisance effecting [sic] Seattle Public Schools,” the complaint states.

However, the lawsuit misses the fact that teenagers don’t just stumble into destructive social media use—parents can choose whether to let their children be on social media, and many apps give parents the ability to place considerable restrictions on their children’s activity. While unhealthy use of social media apps can certainly be an issue for many young people, Seattle Public Schools is attempting to solve this problem through government intervention.

There have been several high-profile lawsuits alleging unacceptable harm to children by social media companies recently, levied by state governments and grieving parents alike. In its complaint, the school district argues that social media companies’ “misconduct has been a substantial factor in causing a youth mental health crisis, which has been marked by higher and higher proportions of youth struggling with anxiety, depression, thoughts of self-harm, and suicidal ideation.” The district even goes so far as to link social media use to post-pandemic increases in everything from tardiness to physical fights.

Further, it claims that this crisis has caused direct harm to public schools, as “schools are struggling not only to provide students with mental health services but also to deliver an adequate education because of the youth mental health crisis.”

Thus, the school district clai