Anxiety and growing depression among students, suicide attempts: public school officials in Seattle, United States, have filed a complaint against social networks like Facebook or TikTok, accusing them of
"attacks"
on the mental health of the young audience.
This complaint targets Facebook and Instagram, which are part of the Meta group, but also Snapchat, Youtube, as well as the Chinese TikTok and its parent company ByteDance, or Google and its parent company Alphabet.
Public school officials in the northwest Washington town say they want
to “hold social media companies accountable for the harm they have caused to the social, emotional and mental health of their children. students
,” according to a press release.
“The increase in suicides, attempted suicides and mental health-related emergency room visits is no coincidence.
(…) This crisis was already worsening before the pandemic and research has identified social networks as playing a major role in the appearance of mental health problems in young people
,” they add.
'A mental health crisis'
In this complaint, filed on Friday and which AFP was able to consult on Sunday, they accuse these companies of having exploited
“the psychology and neurophysiology of their users so that they spend more and more time on their platforms, (. ..) creating a mental health crisis in young Americans”
.
This, they denounce,
"for profit"
, because
"the more time users spend on these platforms, the more the defendants can sell advertisements"
.
The district, which explains that it has put in place resources, including human resources, to help students, believes that these tech giants must put their hands in their pockets:
"Taxpayers should not bear the burden of the mental health crisis that social media companies have created"
.
"In his 2022 State of the Union address, President Joe Biden... called for '
holding social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they are conducting on our children for lucrative”, still indicates in its complaint the school district of Seattle, which ensures that it
“brings this action to do exactly that”
.
Contacted by AFP, Google said it had
"invested heavily in creating safe experiences for children on our platforms"
, and
"introduced strong protections and dedicated features to put their well-being first"
, according to José Castañeda, a spokesperson.
