Last week, four of Canada’s largest school boards took the unprecedented step of filing lawsuits against Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. The suits allege these social media companies' platforms are unsafe and addictive and have disrupted student learning.
The boards are seeking at least $4 billion in compensation for changes in the schools’ learning environments, which has “diverted and drained” resources and personnel.
Weeks earlier, the B.C. government proposed legislation that would allow the government to sue social media companies, among others, for the health-related costs of products that are potentially addictive to kids.
These events are the latest signs that we are reaching a tipping point in the conversation on kids’ access to social media and smartphones. Governments may have previously felt they lacked the data or popular support to regulate kids’ use of these platforms and products. Now, they will be negligent if they don’t act.
In Canadian Affairs’ first editorial, published in November, we noted that mental health problems in youth have risen sharply since smartphones and social media platforms became ubiquitous around 2010. The data show spikes in major depression, incidents of self-inflicted injuries, suicide and loneliness among teens.
We argued that this data provided compelling grounds for governments to require social media companies to “age-gate” kids’ access to their platforms and to limit the amount of time teenagers could spend on any one platform in a day.
