KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Shawnee Mission School District’s Board of Education approved a resolution Monday night for attorneys to explore a lawsuit against a collection of popular social media companies.
The resolution allows the district to ask the attorneys to review litigation options against social media companies like Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube and others, according to the resolution.
The suit would “recover damages suffered by the District as a result of social media companies engaging in deceptive practices by designing and promoting their products to attract and addict children…”
The resolution cites a report made in May by U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Vivek H. Murthy.
LINK | Read a copy of the draft resolution
In the announcement, Murthy wrote there are “ample indicators that social media can also post a risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”
“The most common question parents ask me is, ‘Is social media safe for my kids?’ The answer is that we don’t have enough evidence to say it’s safe, and in fact, there is growing evidence that social media use is associated with harm to young people’s mental health,” Murthy wrote. “We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important river of that crisis — one that we must urgently address.”
It’s not clear if other school districts across the Kansas City area are considering similar litigation. A spokesperson for the Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools District said its board of education had not yet considered the item.
Messages to the Olathe and Blue Valley school districts weren’t immediately returned.
Several districts across the country appear to be pursuing similar litigation. A March 2023 article — two months before the Surgeon General’s report — in Axios identified lawsuits filed in Seattle, Florida and New Jersey.
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