Clover, Fort Mill schools in South Carolina join lawsuit against social media sites
The Clover School District and Fort Mill School District will join other districts in a lawsuit against social media giants like Tik Tok, Snapchat and Youtube.
Clover High School Principal Rod Ruth brought the class action litigation to the Clover school board Monday night. The board approved the district’s participation, based on the mental health impact social media can have on students.
The suit contends social media companies create addictive products that can cause eating disorders, anxiety, depression, suicide and other problems for students as part of what has become a mental health crisis, Ruth said.
“(School) districts are often on the front line of this impact,” Ruth said.
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The school board in Fort Mill approved its participation in the suit on Tuesday night. An attorney for the Fort Mill district echoed mental health reasons for supporting the suit. Board member Wayne Bouldin said regardless the financial outcome, the district should support the suit on principal. But also that there is a financial impact.
“We’re seeing a lot the impacts and we’re spending a lot of money that could be better spent educating, dealing with the ramifications of this thing,” Bouldin said.
The litigation isn’t the first time Clover and Fort Mill schools joined in a larger cause.
Last year the districts participated in a suit, as did others in the region and state, against vape product maker JUUL Labs for targeting students.
The social media suit lists four defendants. Facebook and Instagram owner Meta is one, as are the parent companies of Tik Tok (ByteDance) and Snapchat (Snap). The other is Google, owner of Youtube.
Ruth said the mental health impact on students is significant, and it impacts school districts financially. Schools have to divert resources to address mental health issues. They have to hire more mental health staff, provide new resources, increase teacher and staff training and create more lesson plans on mental health, Ruth said. Also, Ruth said, districts see increased property damage to schools as a result of social media targeting students.
The lawsuit contends social media companies target school children to increase company profits, and looks for system-wide changes in how the companies operate to make them safer for children and adolescents, Ruth said.
Questions of how social media impacts students aren’t new, nor are mental health concerns for students. Districts across the Rock Hill region noted increased mental health concerns when the COVID-19 pandemic hit three years ago. Districts spent considerable amounts of federal funding related to the pandemic on staff, programs and services related to mental health.
South Carolina school districts including Clover and Fort Mill have been making plans the past couple of years for how they’ll respond when federal pandemic money runs dry. Especially given how many districts hired additional staff, including mental health professionals.
Last year, The Herald interviewed school and mental health professionals from across the area to ask how they’re handling the uptick in cases since COVID and what parents can do to help students with mental health issues. Social media was a big part of that discussion. Consensus was it could be years still before the full COVID impact on mental health can be determined.
This story was originally published May 23, 2023 at 1:39 PM with the headline "Clover, Fort Mill schools in South Carolina join lawsuit against social media sites."
