PINELLAS COUNTY — At Tuesday’s Pinellas County School Board meeting, board members voted to enter into litigation against the parent companies of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube.
“I support our school board signing onto this litigation,” said School Board Vice Chairperson Laura Hine during Tuesday’s meeting.
“I think it’s an important statement that we have made as a board that we unanimously moved this forward and that we’re in agreeance and how important it is to put this as a priority for the protection of our children and our community,” said Chairperson Lisa Cane, at the meeting.
The district will be represented by Wagstaff & Cartmell, LLP and The Maher Law Firm.
“What we’ve seen is our youth is highly susceptible to social media and highly addicted to it,” said Matthew Mokwa, Partner with The Maher Law Firm.
The lawsuit claims these social media companies have contributed to increased youth mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and cyberbullying and that the companies were aware of it.
“We would be alleging in this lawsuit that those companies knew of some of the deleterious effects of their platforms upon use and did not do anything about it to mitigate it,” said David Koperski during Tuesday’s meeting who’s an attorney for Pinellas County Schools.
Pinellas is now one of hundreds of school districts part of a nationwide, multi-district litigation against these social media platforms.
“They’re the ones that are witnessing firsthand these problems and being forced to deal with it,” said Mokwa.
ABC Action News reached out to all of the social media platforms named in this lawsuit.
A Snapchat spokesperson told us they can’t comment on specific cases but sent this statement:
"Snapchat was designed differently from other social media platforms because nothing is more important to us than the well-being of our community. Our app opens directly to a camera rather than a feed of content that encourages passive scrolling and is primarily used to help real friends communicate. We aren't an app that encourages perfection or popularity, and we vet all content before it can reach a large audience, which helps protect against the promotion and discovery of potentially harmful material. While we will always have more work to do, we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping friends feel connected, informed, happy, and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence.”
Google, which is the parent company of YouTube, sent this statement in response to the lawsuit:
“Protecting kids across our platforms has always been core to our work. In collaboration with child development specialists, we have built age-appropriate experiences for kids and families on YouTube, and provide parents with robust controls. The allegations in these complaints are simply not true.” - José Castañeda, Google Spokesperson
Attorneys representing the school districts, in this case, said the purpose of the lawsuit is to illicit change in regulations and the way minors engage in social media, as well as getting financial resources for schools.
“Resources so they can get in there, and they can put their own comprehensive plan in place to help police this problem,” said Mokwa.
Each school district will file an individual lawsuit against these companies, and one judge will oversee all of the cases.
“These cases are a way for the school districts to do their role or their part in this problem. To get out there and try to say you know we need resources, we need you guys, as in the social media companies, to be more accountable, to take this seriously, to put forth some guard rails, some rules, to educate both children, parents, adults on the true harm that’s associated with these products,” said Mokwa.
The case is in the early stages.
Representation of the school board will be on a contingent fee basis, meaning that the school board will pay and owe nothing for the attorneys' legal representation unless and until the school board obtains a judgment or approves a settlement in the case.
Specifically, no public funds will be expended on this litigation that will not be paid out of a judgment or settlement the School Board receives.
District attorneys believe it could take years before they reach a settlement.
