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The Rockbridge County School Board has voted to participate, with school districts across the county, in a lawsuit against social media companies.
This decision was made at the Board’s January meeting. “I think it’s safe to say that as educators and as School Board members, we have conversations quite often about challenges that our youth are facing every day,” Phillip Thompson, district superintendent, told the Board.
“Right, wrong, or indifferent, social media seems to be one of those challenges, and it’s a pretty big deal right now.”
While Thompson acknowledged that social media may be positive, he said overuse by school-age children has been an increasing concern.
“The thing that worries me as much as anything, when you talk about social media companies, many of these social companies are developing products and applications that promote compulsive and excessive use by school-age children,” he said.
“There is evidence that currently states that companies are aware of the fact that these are addictive products,” he told the Board. “They want kids, and adults, they want us to be addicted, because it fattens their bottom line.”
Many other school divisions are participating, and several large social media companies are named in the suit.
“School boards nationwide are joining this litigation against the social media companies. As of Dec. 1, 2023, there were about 400 school divisions nationwide who have initiated suit against social media companies,” Thompson said.
“Some of the companies who are defendants in this litigation, you may recognize their names — Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram, ByteDance, who is the owner of Tik Tok, Snap, who is the owner of Snapchat, and Google, owner of YouTube.”
Thompson cited a 2023 U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health.
This advisory, which draws on over 100 scientific articles published in the last decade, found that social media use, for adolescents, predicts decreasing life satisfaction, particularly girls between 11 and 13, and boys between 14 and 15.
Also included is a 2019 study which found that spending more than three hours a day on social media nearly doubled adolescents’ risk of poor mental health outcomes, notably symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Negative impacts of social media spill over into schools, creating challenges for administrators and staff.
“The damage to students’ mental health and physical well-being shows up in our schools every day. It leaves us to have to figure out a way to help those kids. We take all of them, we welcome any child we can into our doors regardless of what is happening when they’re home, regardless of what their circumstances are,” Thompson reminded the Board.
“When they come in, they have some of those or all of those characteristics, whether it’s suicidal ideation or anxiety —whatever it may be, we’re trying to find ways to help that child.”
“Our counselors, our administrators, our teachers, are taking time to figure out ways to help those children,” he said.
Thompson believes this litigation is a way for Rockbridge County Public Schools to be proactive.
“At the moment, when we are experiencing a national youth mental health crisis, we’ve talked about that quite a bit, the mental health concerns that we have for so many of our students, now is the time that we need to act swiftly and we need to act decisively to protect our kids,” he said.
“This is not something we do often — as a school board, we don’t often pick up litigation. But this is something that’s pretty important, and I feel like its valuable enough that I would hope we can take up the mantle and try to help our kids in any way we can,” he said.
The district will provide data toward the lawsuit, and a percentage of any financial compensation won would go to attorneys’ fees.
“We would be asked as a school division for data — tell us how this is affecting you all, as a school division. Probably what we would talk about are the resources we try to put in place to help students, certainly our discipline data, and how much time this is taking, to try to alleviate the behaviors,” Thompson explained.
“There would be no cost to Rockbridge County Public Schools, other than, if there were a monetary compensation, whatever that may be, 25% of that we would have to give to the attorneys who are doing the lion’s share of the work,” he said.
