YouTube, Snap, And TikTok Settle Kentucky School District's Social Media Addiction Claims

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

YouTube, Snap, and TikTok have settled a Kentucky school district’s claims that the platforms fueled a youth mental health crisis that the school district said it was forced to manage.

The Breathitt County School District in rural eastern Kentucky still plans to take Meta Platforms, parent of Facebook and Instagram, to trial on June 15.

The agreements, detailed in federal court filings on Friday, are among the first set for trial in more than 1,200 similar lawsuits filed by school districts nationwide.

“This matter has been amicably resolved and our focus remains on building age-appropriate products and parental controls that deliver on that promise,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement.

Snap and TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The district had sought more than $60 million to cover costs of countering social media’s effects on students and to fund a 15-year mental health program. It also asked the court to order changes to reduce addictive features on the platforms. Terms of the agreements were not disclosed.

More than 3,300 addiction-related lawsuits are pending in California state courts. Another 2,400 cases filed by individuals, cities, states, and school districts have been filed in the California federal court.

The companies have denied the allegations. They say they already take extensive steps to protect teens and young users.

The settlements come weeks after a landmark verdict in a related individual case.

In March, a jury found Meta and Google’s YouTube negligent and awarded $6 million to a 20-year-old woman identified in court records as K.G.M. or Kaley G.M., who argued she suffered depression, body dysmorphia, anxiety, and suicidal ideation as a result of being addicted to the social media apps.

K.G.M.’s case focused narrowly on how design and function—including features such as notifications, “infinite scroll,” and the companies’ proprietary algorithms—rather than third-party content, may have led to alleged psychological harms.

Meta and YouTube executives testified that they do not design their platforms to be addictive.

K.G.M.’s attorneys said the evidence clearly shows that leadership at both Meta and YouTube knew of the harms associated with preteen use, that young people with other co-stressors were particularly vulnerable, and that they went after that demographic anyway, introducing features such as vertical video feeds to compete with rivals such as Snapchat.

Like K.G.M.’s case, the Breathitt County School District’s agreement is one of a handful of bellwether trials expected to have a profound bearing on thousands of related, consolidated civil injury lawsuits brought by parents, children, school districts, and district attorneys.

Reuters and Beige Luciano-Adams contributed to this report.