BALTIMORE — Middle school is hard enough. From fractions, to bullying, kids have a lot of things competing for their attention. Now imagine - they also have to contend with mega-corporation preying on their still-developing brains to get them addicted to an app that will likely cause emotional harm, maybe even physical harm. Because that’s exactly what hundreds of school districts across the county say is happening, and they’re trying to put an end to it.
“This is unfair. It’s not a level playing field. It’s not fair to do this to our kids,” said Matthew Hornbeck, principal at Hampstead Hill Academy in Baltimore.
Baltimore City schools joined a nationwide class action lawsuit last year against the big social media companies - Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube. The lawsuit alleges the companies intentionally design their platforms and algorithms to target children, and get them hooked. The school systems blame these social media giants for contributing to the mental health crisis among their students - increased rates of eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and even suicidal thoughts - according to the suit.
“The companies aren’t designed to help us. They’re designed for clicks and ads. And that’s substantively antithetical to what we’re doing in schools,” Hornbeck said. “It’s been 21 years of being principal at the same school. I’ve really seen the arc, the rise of social media, and it’s just awful. It’s gotten worse and worse and worse.”
Here at Hampstead Hill, which teaches kids from Pre-K to 8th grade, the school’s mental health resources are in overdrive.
And it’s still not enough. There’s guidance counselors, social workers, psychologists, clinicians on staff.
“They are working harder than they have at any time in the past,” Hornbeck told WMAR-2 News. “It is just a tsunami of need that right now, whether you’re in the city or the county, can’t be met.”
Social media isn’t going anywhere. School systems want the companies to change their policies, but in the meantime, what are people like Principal Hornbeck doing to protect their students - at least while they’re physically on school grounds?
“I think when second-graders started showing up with phones, then it dawned on me - that we’re gonna have a problem.”
So, he found a solution. This school year, Hampstead Hill rolled out a new policy. Students in 4th grade and below can’t bring phones into school at all. Kids from 4th to 8th grade were provided with something called a Yondr pouch.
"In the morning, they come in and they put their phone in the pouch... and they close it. Then it can’t open. They’re in charge of keeping this, they can put it wherever they want. They can put it in their backpack. Then in the afternoon, we have five of these unlocking stations,” Hornbeck explains.“You go and unlock it, and then you can take your phone out, and start over the next morning.”
So far, Hornbeck says it’s working. He points to a success story told by his assistant principal, who supervises recess.
“And this group of 8th grade girls, last year when they were in 7th grade, checking their social media and just kind of buried in their phones even on a beautiful day outside. And this year, instead of saying - ‘put your phone away,’ or ‘turn that off, you shouldn’t have that on,’ he watches them play volleyball together, and just be kids."
So, there's hope. But the schools still need help.
“The biggest concern I have right now is that social media would go unchecked and that we will have a generation, not just lost to the pandemic [...] but that we would continue not recognizing what damage is being done to our kids by these social media companies,” Hornbeck said.
We reached out to the social media companies when the lawsuit was first filed. Here are the responses we got:
A spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, said: Protecting kids across our platforms has always been core to our work. In collaboration with child development specialists, we have built age-appropriate experiences for kids and families on YouTube, and provide parents with robust controls. The allegations in these complaints are simply not true.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, provided this statement:
We want to reassure every parent that we have their interests at heart in the work we’re doing to provide teens with safe, supportive experiences online. We’ve developed more than 30 tools to support teens and their families, including tools that allow parents to decide when, and for how long, their teens use Instagram, age verification technology, automatically setting accounts belonging to those under 16 to private when they join Instagram, and sending notifications encouraging teens to take regular breaks. We’ve invested in technology that finds and removes content related to suicide, self-injury or eating disorders before anyone reports it to us. These are complex issues, but we will continue working with parents, experts and regulators such as the state attorneys general to develop new tools, features and policies that meet the needs of teens and their families. Antigone Davis, Head of Safety, Meta
Meta listed some of the tools they've created to foster supportive and positive experience for teens:
- Teens are shown notifications to take regular breaks from Instagram.
- Teens are notified that it might be time to look at something different if they've been scrolling on the same topic for awhile.
- Teens are given the option to turn on hidden words for comments and DMs. Once on, comments and DMs containing emojis, words or phrases selected by the user will be hidden.
- Meta uses age verification technology to help teens have experiences that are appropriate for their age.