Lawyer details challenges in California school board’s legal battle with Big Tech: ‘Hard to prove’
A California school board is suing Google, TikTok and Snapchat for causing unprecedented mental health consequences for young people.
TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube – which is owned by Google – are deliberately designed to be addictive platforms that have “carefully cultivated” a mental health crisis among American students, a Silicon Valley school board alleged in a recent lawsuit.
Thus, the San Mateo County School Board argues that schools need to manage the mental health implications.
Psychotherapist and author Thomas Kersting told ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ on Sunday that schools are now part academic and part mental health facilities due to an ‘overload’ of students with mental health issues. mental health – some likely caused or exacerbated by social media.
YOUTUBE, TIKTOK AND SNAPCHAT SUED BY SILICON VALLEY SCHOOL BOARD FOR “MONETIZATION OF MISERY”
Public safety policy attorney Donte Mills joined the segment, telling co-host Joey Jones that, despite the dangerous stigma that has become synonymous with social media, the lawsuit “will be tough to hold off in court.” It will be difficult to prove that the companies knew their technology would be harmful when it was released, Mills pointed out.
Person using TikTok. (CyberGuy.com)
“These tech companies are definitely benefiting from it; they’re making a lot of money out of it,” Mills said. But, he said, “I don’t know if anyone really understood what the impact of social media would be.”
Mills said the Silicon Valley lawsuit would investigate internal documents and studies from social media companies to prove they knew their products were harmful. The lawsuit also alleges that the tech companies acted with negligence, extortion, public nuisance and violation of unfair competition law.
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“Did they intentionally make people addicted even though they knew it would be harmful? Mills postulated. “It’s going to be hard to prove.”
Nonetheless, Kersting said the decision to press charges could be “one of the biggest messages” that will “help households, schools and children”.
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Kersting said school districts taking action like the one in San Mateo County — including one in Seattle, which filed a similar lawsuit against the same three companies in January — are “exactly the type of actions that need to have place”.
Fox News’ Jon Michael Raasch contributed to this report.
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