Muscogee County School District sues TikTok, other platforms for harming students & costs
The Muscogee County School District has joined a class-action lawsuit against the world’s major social media companies, alleging that their marketing practices make the platforms addictive, harming students and costing the school district.
The MCSD board voted during last month’s meeting to approve the recommendation from superintendent David Lewis to authorize Kansas City, Missouri, law firm Wagstaff & Cartmell and four other co-counsels, including Atlanta-based Hall Booth Smith, which has an office in Columbus, to represent the school district in litigation against Facebook, Meta, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube and Google, as well as other possible defendants.
“Social media usage has been shown to be detrimental to the mental health and well-being of teenagers, and is often a platform for bullying and other negative peer to peer interactions,” the MCSD administration wrote for the agenda item’s background and rationale. “Because of this, there is staff time expended for disciplinary and counseling services related to issues that start online and then impact the learning environment.
“The Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service has issued an Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health which is a growing concern about the effects of social media on youth mental health. … This lawsuit is to not only hold these companies accountable but also obtain funding for prevention education and mental health services.”
How MCSD board members voted
Six of the nine MCSD board members voted yes: chairwoman Pat Hugley Green of District 1, countywide representative Kia Chambers, Naomi Buckner of District 4, Mark Cantrell of District 6, Pat Frey of District 7 and Margot Schley of District 8. Nickie Tillery of District 2 and Vanessa Jackson of District 3 abstained.
Vice chairwoman Laurie McRae of District 5 was out of town on a family vacation and absent from that meeting, so her vote wasn’t recorded, but she spoke against the recommendation during the board’s work session.
McRae told the Ledger-Enquirer in an email, “Since we are now a party to the lawsuit, I cannot publicly say why I was against it, but my opposition and concerns were expressed during the work session, and I would not have voted for it.”
During the May 13 work session, McRae said, “I have a lot of reservations about this. I would like to see more evidence. … I think it’s hard to sue a company we use for communication purposes. We foster the use of this to tell our students and to tell our staff a lot of updates and communication. We also don’t really take their phones away at school, so it’s kind of hard to blame them for the fact that they’re addicted if we’re not taking them away.”
McRae said she understands joining the lawsuit doesn’t cost MCSD, but the administration will have to spend time gathering evidence the lawyers need to support the claim.
“I also think then we get into confidentiality issues as to the information we’re now providing to a lawsuit about our students and their behavior and their emotional status,” she said. “There’s a lot, a lot of reasons I think this is a bad idea.”
The issue is about whether social media companies should have some type of regulation and accountability, restricting the age of their users, Green said during the work session.
“We can’t do anything about what’s happening in the home before they come to school,” Buckner said then. “But what we can do is something that impacts the school.”
During the May 20 meeting, board attorney Greg Ellington of Hall Booth Smith said he confirmed with the lead counsel that student identities won’t be publicly revealed in the lawsuit.
“This is dealing with disaggregated data,” he said.
Tillery made a motion to delay the vote until June to allow time for more questions to be answered. Chambers asked Ellington whether MCSD could join the lawsuit later.
“Time is of the essence,” Ellington replied, noting the lawyers expect a ruling that would constitute a cut-off for plaintiffs at the end of June. MCSD would have to join the lawsuit before a settlement or a judgment to be entitled to compensation, he said.
Tillery’s motion to delay the vote failed.
The Ledger-Enquirer emailed each board member May 31 to ask them to explain their vote or abstention. Buckner is the only one who responded before publication.
“Social media directly or indirectly impacts children everywhere through seduction or lack of controlling,” Buckner wrote. “By joining the social media law suit, Muscogee County takes a position against currently operating social media and can potentially gain financially. In addition, there seems to be no disadvantage in joining the suit.”
How much money is MCSD seeking?
No dollar amount for possible compensation was mentioned during the board’s discussion, nor is it noted in the attorney-client engagement agreement.
In an emailed interview, Ellington told the Ledger-Enquirer on Monday, “MCSD is seeking fair and just compensation for the costs imposed on MCSD by the defendants.”
According to the agreement, MCSD will be required to pay legal fees and expenses from only money recovered through judgment or settlement in this litigation, not from school district funds. The attorney fees will total 33% of the recovered amount and will be divided among the law firms as follows:
- Wagstaff & Cartmell 23.33%
- Beasley Allen Crow Methvin Portis & Miles of Atlanta 23.33%
- Goza & Honnod of Overland Park, Kansas, 23.33%
- Attorney Joel Wright of Lehi, Utah 20%
- Hall Booth Smith 10%.
MCSD is one of approximately 1,000 school districts that have joined this lawsuit nationwide, including DeKalb, Clayton and Marietta in Georgia, Ellington said.
MCSD’s evidence against social media companies
Asked what is the evidence that MCSD has been harmed by these social media companies, Ellington listed the following:
School counselors. The number of school counselors needed to provide mental-health services to MCSD students “has increased substantially with the increased use of social media over the last 15 years,” Ellington said.
Bullying. When an MCSD student is bullied by another student, the school district “can be required to intervene,” even when it happens off campus, Ellington said.
Fighting. Because social media algorithms try to maximize screen time, Ellington said, videos of fights between students can be put at the top of a feed, and “companies such as YouTube and TikTok frequently pay young people for content that gets substantial screen time or views.” All of which “can create a culture where students may start filming, or even encourage, a school fight instead of trying to stop the fight or immediately reporting the fight to an adult,” he said.
Swatting or anonymous threats of “macro” violence. These threats “can result in school closures, or increased absenteeism, and generally disrupt the learning process,” Ellington said. Social media algorithms allow such threats and can perpetuate them, he said.
Threats of “micro” violence from or against a student. Social media algorithms “can result in dozens, if not hundreds, of fellow students seeing such a threat before it is addressed by the authorities and properly addressed, increasing the harms of such threat,” Ellington said.
Ellington offered the May 2023 report by the U.S. Surgeon General to support MCSD’s claim. The report cites a longitudinal study of U.S. adolescents ages 12-15 that found those who spent more than three hours per day on social media faced double the risk of experiencing “poor mental health outcomes including symptoms of depression and anxiety.”
But the surgeon general also notes that a study shows “a majority of adolescents report that social media helps them feel more accepted (58%), like they have people who can support them through tough times (67%), like they have a place to show their creative side (71%), and more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives (80%).”
Ellington concluded, “The algorithm used by the social media companies is highly addictive, with research showing it is as addictive as many of the other things that have faced similar lawsuits and/or been highly regulated. Rarely in recent history has a society allowed such an addictive product to be used by children, and we are just beginning to understand the consequences.”
This story was originally published June 3, 2024 at 12:45 PM.
