Impact on students behind lawsuit against social media giants: DSBN

A decision by the District School Board of Niagara to join with four other Ontario school boards and individual schools to sue social media companies over the impact apps like Facebook and TikTok has on students was not made overnight, a DSBN spokesperson said.

While she wasn’t involved in making the decision, Marian Reimer Friesen, Superintendent of Curriculum and Student Achievement for the board, said it reflected concerns she and others have.

“I will tell you, from my perspective, we've been very concerned about social media and the impact that it has on our students for quite some time,” she said. “Certainly, we've shared the concerns of other boards.”

The lawsuit of which the DSBN is a part of is like one filed back in March by four other Ontario school boards – the Toronto District School Board, Toronto Catholic District School Board, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board and Peel District School Board

In addition to the DSBN, statements of claim were filed on May 28 in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice by Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, York Catholic District School Board, Trillium Lakelands District School Board, and the Ottawa Catholic School Board. Individual schools Holy Name of Mary College School, an all-girls school in Mississauga, and Eitz Chaim, a Jewish day school in Toronto are also a part of the lawsuit.

The new lawsuit shares similar wording to the one filed by the other four boards and characterizes social-media companies as choosing to “maximize profits at the expense of student well-being,” without regard to the limited resources that schools have to divert to help young people.

The action has been taken against Meta Platforms Inc., which is responsible for Facebook and Instagram, Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, and ByteDance Ltd., the owner of TikTok. The school boards and private schools are advancing claims of $2.6 billion.

In the lawsuits, the school boards and schools say that the companies should have known that their “negligent conduct” would disrupt the sleep patterns and brain development of young people and keep them from focusing and learning in the classroom.

None of the allegations have been proven in court and the social media companies all say they have tools in place to protect young users, including technology that finds and removes content related to suicide, self-injury and eating disorders before its reported (Meta), parental controls and screentime limits for users under 18 (TikTok).

Snap, meanwhile, said it intends to defend the claims, and added that while it has work to do, “we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping close friends feel connected, happy and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence.”

But social media, Reimer Friesen said, has only added to the challenges. Conflicts between students that may have happened on school property would often get resolved quickly in the past but that is not the case now.

“We find is that 10 years ago, students might have had some kind of a social conflict or disagreement that happened during school hours, that typically would have been dealt with at school,” she said. “Even if it didn't come to the attention of a teacher, the students would have gone home, and it would have rested for an evening and also they would come back the next day and be in a different frame of mind or even ready to let it go.”

Social media has changed that, she said.

“Because social media continues the conversation and it continues to bubble and boil and often become so alarmingly inflated by the next day," she said. “We’re no longer dealing with minor issues. We’re dealing with major issues that have erupted and have gone very public.”

Hardly a day goes by where videos pop up of school fights or teachers being challenged in classroom. Those videos garner lots of clicks online and are widely shared.

“That would have never been something that would have been so readily available, and so publicly available [before social media],” Reimer Friesen said, adding such events are happening with “alarming regularity” and are becoming a bigger concern.

“We're not expecting them to go away, but we want [social media companies] to put some controls in place to keep our kids safe,” she said.

The lawsuit comes down with a recent announcement by the Province of new rules surrounding the use of cell phones in schools that will come into effect in the fall.

Students in Grade 6 and below will be required to put their cell phones away, powered off or set to silent mode throughout the school day, unless they receive permission from the teacher. Students in Grades 7 to 12 will only be able to access their phones between classes or during lunch, unless directed by the teacher.

Students who don’t comply would be sent to the principal’s office, and they could be suspended.

School boards will also be required to restrict access to all social media platforms on school WiFi networks and on school devices, the government said.

Those measures will help, Reimer Friesen said, but it won’t eliminate the issues entirely.

“We're extremely grateful that will go a long way and be very helpful,” she said. “Unfortunately, that only helps during school hours. Much of what is happening is happening outside of school hours and kids will have access to their own devices and home WiFi and those sorts of things. We can't control the access that happens after hours.”

Milica Petkovic, DSBN's senior manager of communications and public relations, said the board plans to provide updates to parents and students as things progress.

"We've taken the action of joining this lawsuit because we have heard from our parents, families, students and staff who have brought forward concerns about the impact of social media in our schools and in our students' lives," she said.

And while the DSBN has joined in the lawsuit, The Niagara Catholic District School Board has not decided yet whether it will follow suit, Director of Education Camillo Cipriano said in an email.

“Our board will be discussing this at a June meeting,” Cipriano wrote.  “Board legal counsel will be providing guidance and the board will discuss the possibility of following this process as other boards have at that time.”

The next scheduled meeting for Niagara Catholic is a committee-of-the-whole meeting on June 11. The next board meeting is on June 25.

-- With files by Caroline Alphonso