Ontario School Boards Sue Social Media Companies for $4.5B

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Five major Ontario School Boards have filed a $4.5 billion lawsuit against Snapchat, ByteDance and Meta, which collectively targets popular social media platforms TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat, for allegedly “rewir[ing] the way children think, behave, and learn, leaving educators and schools to manage the fallout,” as stated in a press release. This follows hundreds of similar suits by school boards in the United States, but is the first of its kind in Canada.

The suit was filed on Mar. 27 by the Toronto District School Board, the Peel District School Board, the Toronto Catholic District School Board, and the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, who have collectively formed the organization Schools for Social Media Change. They hope that the lawsuit will force social media companies to “make their products safer and compensate school boards for disrupting their educational mandate.”

Soon after the filing, School Board Chair Jodi Lloyd announced that the Simcoe County District School Board would be joining, but they have yet to be formally added. Lloyd told Global News that “As a school board, we work to support our students in any way we can to be successful, but it is straining our resources. The needs are greater and greater, and we felt that [joining the lawsuit] was an opportunity to address this.”

According to a 2021 Ontario survey from the Canadian Mental Health association, “approximately 91 per cent of Ontario students in grades 7 to 12 use social media daily,” despite the fact that in 2019, Ontario banned the use of smartphones in schools. 

The joint lawsuit alleges that this extensive use “seriously and negatively impacts the student population by causing maladaptive brain development, compulsive use, disrupted sleep patterns, behavioral dysregulation, learning and attention impairment, and other serious issues that impact the school, learning, and teaching climate.”

With Ontario already having regulations on cell phone usage in schools, these school boards are targeting the source of the compulsive use and are attempting to hold social media companies responsible for “employ[ing] exploitative business practices and hav[ing] negligently designed unsafe and/or addictive products that [they] market and promote to students.” 

Schools for Social Media Change alleges that compulsive use by students, at the hands of these companies for profit, has “fundamentally changed the school, learning, and teaching climate.”

Through this lawsuit, these school boards are seeking compensation and action on the part of social media companies to raise awareness and manage compulsive student social media use. They are suing for $4.5 billion, which will cover costs of alternative education pathways to respond to attention deficit problems caused by screen usage, and programming for the awareness of digital literacy and online safety. 

This will also help create and maintain the necessary resources to “investigate and respond to threats made against schools, staff, and students through social media products, to prevent, investigate, and deal with the consequences of cyberbullying caused by, and occurring over, social media products and to respond to the Defendants’ products increasing students’ risks of experiencing sexual harassment, sexual abuse, CSAM, and similar serious harms.” 

Besides compensation, the lawsuit is also calling on these companies “to redesign their products to keep students safe,” by changing their algorithms to be less aggressive and harmful. The exact demands regarding reformation of social media algorithms is not stated in the lawsuit, and more will be revealed when the suit goes to trial.

After the announcement, Ontario Premier Doug Ford denounced the lawsuit in an unrelated press conference.

“Let’s focus on the core values of education. Let's focus on math, reading and writing,” Ford said. “I don’t know what they are spending on lawyer fees going after these massive companies that have endless cash to fight this. Let's focus on the kids and not about this other nonsense that they're looking to fight in court.” 

This statement was made after a press release from Schools for Social Media Change revealed that the “school boards will not be responsible for any costs related to the lawsuit unless a successful outcome is reached.” 

This suit comes after 41 US states have filed various lawsuits against Meta, alleging that Meta drives social media addictions in its younger users, according to The Conversation. As these lawsuits advance, they may reveal more about their potential, and the exact likelihood of success. As well, the outcome of the recent legislation from the United States House to ban TikTok, may alter or bolster the suit. Currently, there is no set date for the proceedings to begin.