KENOSHA, Wis. — The Kenosha Unified School Board (KUSD) voted 6-1 on Tuesday to join a lawsuit accusing social media companies of maximizing profit at the expense of students' mental health.
Superintendent Jeffery Weiss had a straightforward reason for wanting to join the lawsuit.
"Because of the anxiety, depression, and thoughts of self-harm which are perpetrated through social media," Weiss said during the board meeting.
Districts across the country have joined including Washington, California, Florida, and New Jersey to name a few.
The lawsuit was filed by theFrantz Law Group against TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, and other companies.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, told theAP in a statement that it takes user safety seriously and said, "We don't allow content that promotes suicide, self-harm or eating disorders, and of the content we remove or take action on, we identify over 99% of it before it's reported to us."
Kenosha School Board Member Rebecca Stevens says the impacts of social media can be seen in schools throughout the district.
"We have a lot more fights, we have a lot more calls for our police officers. We have kids using cameras inappropriately in schools," Stevens said. "Kids are certainly exposed to so many negative things over social media and we certainly don't need it feeding into the schools."
The lawsuit points to a CDC National Youth Risk Behavior Survey that shows teen depression is on the rise.
UWM Professor of Educational Psychology Chris Lawson agrees social media has had an impact on mental health.
"Social media is a place where people go to present themselves as excellent. That can be really stressful for kids because they go on there and they see examples of people who are really good at things and not so many examples of kids and people doing things they're not so great at," Lawson said.
But he said it's not just kids being affected and he's not so sure the responsibility falls on the social media companies.
"I think it's our responsibility as parents, as teachers, as elders to help kids learn how to not just use the technology, but how to understand it, how to comprehend it and maybe when not to use it," Lawson said.
Weiss said, "The goal of this lawsuit is to not only hold the companies accountable but also to obtain funds for prevention and education as well as mental health services."
A similar lawsuit against vape pen company Juul, and by the same law firm, was successful. KUSD was also a part of that lawsuit.
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