WICOMICO COUNTY, Md. — Since the chatrooms of the 90s, limited to an interface with only usernames and colored font, morphed into My Space and Facebook, the internet has become the Wild West. Social Media apps and their effects on users have gone unchecked, but there's a new sheriff in town. Wicomico County Public Schools have filed a lawsuit against Meta, Google, TikTok, Snap Inc., and Byte Dance. This comes on the heals of Harford, Howard, Montgomery and Prince George's Counties joining 500 school systems across the country claiming that students are facing a mental health crisis due to the social media products designed to target and addict children.
READ MORE: Maryland schools file lawsuit blaming social media for youth mental health crisis
"The designs of these platforms are responsible for a deterioration in the mental well-being of the county’s student population," the lawsuit suggests. "This decline in youth mental health creates a significant burden on the district to allocate resources to address student mental health that would regularly be used for other educational purposes."
Because social media is still in its infancy, the public is still presently learning more about its downsides every day. Although, there are effects that are pretty common among kids, teenagers, and adults alike. "Depression, low self-esteem, and eating disorders are running rampant in our schools," claims Wicomico County. Teachers feel overwhelmed as these issues ask them to do the work of mental health professionals which they are simply unqualified for.
The challenge of getting kids off their screens and back into the books looms large as social media is massively addictive and dangerous. According to Addiction Center.com, "studies have shown that the constant stream of retweets, likes, and shares from these sites cause the brain's reward area to trigger the same kind of chemical reaction seen with drugs like Cocaine."
Phil Federico, a lawyer representing the Wicomico County school district, says, "These companies are extremely successful in developing algorithms that keep our kids engaged and online for as long as possible to profit as much as possible. That needs to stop, and these companies need to be held accountable for the impact of their products.”
