Harford County Public School files lawsuit against social media giants

BALTIMORE -- Harford County Public Schools (HCPS) has filed a lawsuit against several social media companies, alleging that their products are detrimental to youth mental health, a spokesperson for the county said in a statement Thursday.     

The defendants in the lawsuit are Meta, Google, ByteDance, and Snap Inc. - the parent companies behind Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and SnapChat. 

The lawsuit alleges that the platforms are both addictive and exploitative in nature, and make it difficult for the school system to provide adequate mental health resources to its body of nearly 40,000 students.  

"The algorithms driving these platforms are designed to exploit young users' brains in a way comparable to nicotine use to manipulate users into staying on the platform as long as possible. The social media platforms hijack tweens' and teens' compulsion to connect and feel accepted." the county's statement said.      

The suit also alleges that the companies advertising-based business models enable them to profit off of users addiction to the platforms.  

The district said it's seeing increased rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation among students.  

"This lawsuit seeks two things: force social media companies to make changes to their platforms for the well-being of our kids and hold these mega-social media companies accountable for the high costs associated with addressing the mental health problems impacting our students," Dr. Carol Mueller, President of the Board of Education of Harford County said.

Harford County Public Schools also said that they've had to reallocate funds for educational needs in order to combat the harms from social media, and that the lawsuit is at no cost to taxpayers.