Seattle Schools Sue TikTok, Meta and Other Platforms Over Youth 'Mental Health Crisis' 46
Seattle public schools have sued the tech giants behind TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat, accusing them of creating a "mental health crisis among America's Youth." Engadget reports: The 91-page lawsuit (PDF) filed in a US district court states that tech giants exploit the addictive nature of social media, leading to rising anxiety, depression and thoughts of self-harm. "Defendants' growth is a product of choices they made to design and operate their platforms in ways that exploit the psychology and neurophysiology of their users into spending more and more time on their platforms," the complaint states. "[They] have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse of Defendants' social media platforms."
Harmful content pushed to users includes extreme diet plants, encouragement of self-harm and more, according to the complaint. That has led to a 30 percent increase between 2009 and 2019 of students who report feeling "so sad or hopeless... for two weeks or more in a row that [they] stopped doing some usual activities." That in turn leads to a drop in performance in their studies, making them "less likely to attend school, more likely to engage in substance use, and to act out, all of which directly affects Seattle Public Schools' ability to fulfill its educational mission." Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act means that online platforms aren't responsible for content posted by third parties. However, the lawsuit claims that the provision doesn't protect social media companies for recommending, distributing and promoting content "in a way that causes harm."
Harmful content pushed to users includes extreme diet plants, encouragement of self-harm and more, according to the complaint. That has led to a 30 percent increase between 2009 and 2019 of students who report feeling "so sad or hopeless... for two weeks or more in a row that [they] stopped doing some usual activities." That in turn leads to a drop in performance in their studies, making them "less likely to attend school, more likely to engage in substance use, and to act out, all of which directly affects Seattle Public Schools' ability to fulfill its educational mission." Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act means that online platforms aren't responsible for content posted by third parties. However, the lawsuit claims that the provision doesn't protect social media companies for recommending, distributing and promoting content "in a way that causes harm."
Again? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been just shy of 36 hours since the same story was posted [slashdot.org].
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You're almost as lazy as the editors.
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No, who does that?
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No, it's not fine. The owners of the site didn't like the narrative that came out the first time, so they posted it again to get a different outcome they could point at to con advertisers into supporting their cryptocurrency whoring.
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And it needs to be posted every day from now on !!
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Cut them some slack, a lot goes into all the new features, enhancements, refactorings, and bug fixes to the platform, they can't be everywhere at once.
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We should sue Slashdot over "Duplicates Crisis"
Don't they have better things to spend on? (Score:3)
It's always amazing that school districts can waste time and money on this sort of useless crap.
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When it would be more expensive to counter and repair the damage done than it is to prevent it, then going the route of prevention is the smarter and better way.
Repeat of McDonalds (Score:2)
Re:Repeat of McDonalds (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know where I fall on this topic overall. I do think more should be done to fix "the algorithm" so it's not as doom and gloom. I just don't know where I fall in the should vs legally required to aspect.
Re:Repeat of McDonalds (Score:4, Insightful)
I do think more should be done to fix "the algorithm" so it's not as doom and gloom.
The algorithm isn't broken. Its target design is. There's a great analysis here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] - that digs into what went wrong in gaming and it's essentially the same problem: Social Medial is exploitative , it's purpose is not to enhance the human experience but to exploit human psychology to make more money.
And that's not a given. A world is possible where making a good social interaction website is a profitable service and thus exists. It's just that being an asshole is MORE profitable, so that's what FB, etc. are doing.
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I agree with that, but it's a culture thing.
The Amish - whatever else you think of them - have the approach of "think of what it does to our community before allowing it" for this specific reason. The general US culture has more of a "let everyone mess around as they wish and if it's bad, we'll sue them into oblivion" approach. Europe tries a middle ground of having more regulations than the US and less ridiculous punitive damages, without being religious about it.
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The comparison with cigarettes is much closer than you may think. A cigarette is far removed from "fermented tobacco leaves wrapped in paper". They are a custom tailored and chemically modified product to give you a designed nicotine kick, made just the way to make you crave for another one and to get you hooked.
Social media and video platforms follow the same path: they measure their success in "engagement time", i.e. the time you are glued to their screens. They will apply any trick imaginable to get you
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Social media and video platforms follow the same path: they measure their success in "engagement time", i.e. the time you are glued to their screens. They will apply any trick imaginable to get you "engaged" for that one extra second. This would be sort of ok, if they did it with mature adults, but at least Tiktok, Instagram and Youtube have put a strong emphasis on young people and children.
I get their side, to an extent. They're a company, and making more money is their goal. People generally don't want to pay subscriptions, especially the youth, so advertising is the way forward. I don't think the current situation was exactly their goal, but they know they'd lose money changing it. Then, even if they can accept the reduced revenue, there are the shareholders to think about. I understand that they do have more leeway than people think. They're not beholden solely to shareholder profits. Howe
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Hi, are you looking for a job? If so, I can put you in touch with several corporations that are looking for people to polish their knobs. While McDonald's restaurants no longer use door knobs, their corporate offices have plenty of knobs that need polishing. Your comments here suggest that you'd be extremely good at polishing knobs at McDonald's.
Re: Repeat of McDonalds (Score:2)
That's already my job, quit doxing me!
Now do same to them for exactly the same reason. (Score:4, Interesting)
The one thing they can't argue against (Score:3)
"they have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use"
Everyone can debate this whole issue to death but that statement is undeniable fact. It's the backbone of a successful social media platform and they are very deliberately engineered to produce this exact effect. Somewhere along the way we've been sold this idea that successful tech companies must be offering something "good" because so many people want to use them. Heroin dealers have similar strategies but don't quite get the same kudos.
Shrinks on board (Score:2)
It is known that highly trained psychologists are hired by ad companies in order to find the best way to get customers to buy their product. I would expect the same thing was done to get kids hooked on the various social media platform. So yeah, if this is the case I hope the SM platforms asses get nailed to the wall.
And yes, excessive SM use is damaging and warps one's perception of reality, even as an adult,
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This starts with parents and schools (Score:3)
Yes, social media is poison and I'd like to see it stringently regulated or gone altogether. But when kids are SO dependent on the approval of others that they so easily fall prey to the shit that happens on social media, that speaks volumes about both the parents and the schools.
Good parenting teaches independence, the questioning of authority, and resistance to the knee-jerk impulse to follow the crowd. Good schooling carries the ball further, by fostering independence, by providing evidence that teachers are trustworthy instead of just enforcing blind obedience, and by teaching how to be part of a larger group or social set without being subsumed and lost.
Parents, teachers, and institutions are failing. I think the corporatocracy bears a lot of the blame, with the toadying of the government to business interests coming in a close second.
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"Yes, social media is poison and I'd like to see it stringently regulated or gone altogether. But when kids are SO dependent on the approval of others that they so easily fall prey to the shit that happens on social media, that speaks volumes about both the parents and the schools."
This in general is scary. Because this creates a generation of kids who will be easily molded to do what the powers to be want them to do. Think the "Hitler Youth". The US might be a democracy now, but 20 years ago we cou
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"The US might be a democracy now, but 20 years *FROM NOW*"
All I want for Christmas is my edit button....
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No wonder America is failing with such attitudes. Let me educate you - good parenting must be based on Confucianism. Respect for the parents, authorities and the rules of the society.
Agreed - so long as the respect isn't conflated with reflexive obedience, the parents and authorities prove worthy of respect by earning it as opposed to merely demanding it, and the rules of society adapt as necessary to changing needs, circumstances, and opportunities.
It's possible you were being sarcastic, so if I missed the 'whoosh' of something that went over my head, please accept my apologies.
Mental health is more adversely impacted by school (Score:3)
I think the adverse impact of social media on mental health is pretty well established by studies at this point.
But it's interesting to have this suit brought by a public school system when youth mental health emergencies - and suicides for males - double when school is in session [psychologytoday.com]. The correlation pre-dates social media.
If such statistics hold for Seattle public schools, should they be sued? Or shut themselves down?
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I'm not that surprised by those stats. With school comes schoolyard interaction and bullying. Bullying is a huge factor in youth suicide and something that schools haven't traditionally addressed very well.
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Amongst other things, there is victim blaming, "Johnny MUST have done something to set Tommy Tucker off", teachers who want to sit on their asses and do the absolute minimum to collect a paycheck "Here is you daily work packet. Now shut up and just do your work" and don't even want to think of having to keep the kids from killing each other, fear of lawsuits because the aforementioned Tommy is "damaged", "mentally ill", "just needs to be understood" a burden left on the school chums he is beating up and ste
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This.
Kids are still trying to find their place in the world and figuring things out, including social interaction, group dynamics and later hormones and sex. That largely goes by trial-and-error. A lot of error. Kids can be outright cruel to each other. Bullying is just one aspect of that. The intrigue, backstabbing, exclusion-inclusion and social dynamics among any group of girls especially puts Game of Thrones to shame.
something that schools haven't traditionally addressed very well.
By nature, it's not easy to address. Teachers and other adults are outsiders in this se
To lazy to write again (Score:3)
I'll just post links to my posts on the first article. If should be fun reading them out of context :-)
https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22695982&cid=63191032 [slashdot.org]
https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22695982&cid=63191126 [slashdot.org]
https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22695982&cid=63191140 [slashdot.org]
If made precedent, could backfire (Score:2)
Those schools could get sued for that ailment by parents, and the schools might be hard pressed to then argue it didn't exist, and they could end up with only not being responsible as their defense.
activity kids (Score:1)
don't agree (Score:1)
Same here! (Score:1)