20
votes
Maryland school district sues social media alleging addictive design rewires young brains
Link information
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- Title
- Anne Arundel County Public Schools sues social media companies
- Authors
- David Collins
- Published
- Aug 29 2023
- Word count
- 1645 words
Ah, the lengths bureaucrats will go to avoid responsibility.
I have been wondering when these suits would start to pop up, but gotta say, definitely didn't anticipate a school district to be the first plaintiff. As far as grounds go, I don't think there's much to lean on here, because, frankly, TV, coca-cola, and plenty of other things seem, on face value, only marginally less addictive or harmful, and I don't think the AMA would be able to sue McDonald's on the basis of seeding addictive eating behaviors in children, for example.
What responsibility are you referencing? According to the article, the school district is trying to recoup the increasing amount of money they need to put into mental health support.
Oh, none in any seriousness. I guess my joke is meant to imply that they're blaming mental health issues, poor test scores, and low attendance on social media instead of reexamining their structures.
I think it's fair to pin blame on social media companies, at least more blame than school districts. Very little of the recent spiral in children's mental health can be attributed to the way schools run, given that that hasn't changed much in the last 10-20 years. That being said, they're probably grasping for straws legally.
Just to clarify, it was completely unserious. It was just a cliche joke that felt in-tone with the headline. I totally see where the district is coming from, and more or less wish them luck. However, if you know anything about Maryland's school districts, that sort of buck-passing is really typical.
Yea, this is just the beginning of something that's going to really explode over the next few years. Social Media is the new smoking, only this time there was never any sort of age-barrier.
I read a book, the Chaos Machine by Max Fisher, that claimed among other things that social media is designed to produce the same type of behavioral reinforcemet that are targeted by casino machines. We have age limits for casinos for good reason
Maybe attention span. But depression, anxiety? No.
https://neurosciencenews.com/teen-depression-social-media-23834/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563223002108
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563219303723
No, that's just the kids witnessing adults imploding the world in real time.
The people who decided to sue never cared about reality—like the science above, they could have googled—so my gut tells me they actually want to isolate kids from their online support networks for some bigoted reason.
The first two links you have are for children in Norway, and the third study is a yearly self-reported survey from teenagers. Teenagers aren't necessarily great at reporting or even understanding their feelings, and self reported surveys can be misleading. The second study outlines in its Limitations that the data is from 2013/2014 and similar conclusions can't necessarily be drawn today. TikTok gained traction around 2020, and a lot of algorithm fussing has happened in the past five years alone. I am personally not going to dismiss the emergency room and community reports of suicide, depression and anxiety and those studies seem unhelpful to downright destructive.
I have to admit I am looking forward to seeing the information underlying the algorithms becoming more publicly known through lawsuits like this.