"Colorado school districts join national legal campaign against social media giants, alleging they harm children’s mental health", 10 Oct 2023

Colorado school districts are joining hundreds of others across the U.S. in suing social media companies, alleging that platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat are contributing to the mental health crisis among their students...

School boards overseeing the state’s two largest districts — Denver Public Schools and Jeffco Public Schools — recently agreed to join the national lawsuit, as has the Aspen School District...

The school districts are being represented by a national law firm coalition led by Wagstaff & Cartmell in Kansas City, Missouri.

Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed against the social media companies in federal courts across the country.

The cases have been consolidated in a multidistrict litigation that will go before a California judge, who will manage discovery and pretrial briefings. Afterward, the cases will be sent back to the federal district court in the school districts’ home states for individual trials unless there is a settlement...

The Aspen School District filed its lawsuit in June in the U.S. District Court for Colorado against TikTok; Alphabet Inc., the Google owner that manages YouTube; Meta Platforms, which operates Facebook and Instagram; and Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat...

The goal, [Superintendent David Baugh] said, is to have social media platforms become less addictive and to change their algorithms so that children will see less content that makes them feel inadequate and insecure...

Companies that run the social media companies pushed back on the school districts’ allegations.

“Protecting kids across our platforms has always been core to our work,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in a statement... "The allegations in these complaints are simply not true...”

Representatives for TikTok and Meta did not respond to a request for comment...

The U.S. Surgeon General has issued an advisory on the affects social media can have on children and teens...