By James Coulter

(Image credit: IndyKids)

The ongoing social media crisis has culminated in a lawsuit by Wake County against tech company Meta. Wake County is joined by 42 state attorney generals and school systems nationwide against Meta, the tech giant that operates Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. These school systems believe that Meta and its owners play a major hand in creating an adolescent mental health crisis that extends across the U.S. The lawsuit’s central aim is nothing less than “financial compensation for the alleviation of school resources.” 

The schools allege that Meta and its associated programs have long been designing algorithms that exploit human psychology. In their view, Meta has created a system that is not that different from drug addiction. Their complex algorithms seek to maximize user time on the platform at the expense of negative impacts on children’s mental health. 

AP Psychology teacher Stori Richards supports Wake County’s claim that school resources have been wasted, as she states, “The schools are responsible in modern day for the mental well-being of students.”

She subsequently notes how a range of parents do not even believe in “psychological issues.” Thus, the most help that a student can get is from the school that they attend. Richards highlights that these tech giants have become a stain on already diminished school resources.

Richards attributes Meta as a key actor in issues such as cyberbullying, body issues, and eating disorders. Users judge lifestyles, subsequently increasing mental health problems. Eating disorders can crowd an already image-focused teen mind—not to mention the drain on time that could be spent educating rather than triaging health issues. Furthermore, Richards alludes to an event here at Cary High. 

Not all that long ago, “an Instagram account was used to call out students and to criticize students, and bully stigmas.” This all reveals that using these programs comes at a cost. It “affects a lot more students than people realize.”

(Image credit: ABC News, Getty Images)

Richards’ assessment aligns neatly with the prosecutor’s claims. The school administrators representing Wake County have been articulate at defining how the “content they (students) are consuming is often harmful.” The harms mainly include new trends that advocate for violence, self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, and cyberbullying. 

Above all, Richards asserts that Wake County isn’t taking the right approach to attaining success in terminating social media’s influence on the ‘youth mental health crisis.’ The lawsuit relies heavily on anecdotal evidence rather than widespread trends seen in schools like Cary High.

There is really one other key factor that has the ability to prevent such a crisis: the students’ parents. Parents have the power to mediate content and protect their children. Most of the arguments blame social media for anxiety, depression, and other severe mental health issues and disorders. But the way the schools are going about solving the issue could prove inadequate, according to Richards. In other words, if the schools achieve forcing the company to pay and publicly acknowledge its alleged grave errors, they still would not solve the larger problem of users engaging in responsible use of the product, with active parents monitoring their children’s social media use.” 

A convenient solution includes the implementation of content ratings based on age, filtering content, and removing inappropriate materials. In addition, the content-creating users themselves should be more closely monitored for uploading safe content that aligns with the properly reinforced restrictions. All in all, Richards agrees that “students need to be taught proper use of these things, but content creators too, because they’re making this stuff.” 

She sums up by reinforcing that users, parents, and content creators all bear responsibility for creating and regulating a safe environment—one enforced by the companies. 

Lastly, she goes on to state that students should be taught by both parents and teachers the proper use of such a system. All involved should embark on this enterprise with a clearer method—one aimed at setting up Google family-link type sharing policies as another valuable path towards success. 

However, this is all a subject of ongoing debate. Divisions are evident, especially in the discussion over whether or not TikTok specifically would be better off being banned for similar reasons in addition to firm political reasons, which has sparked a heated argument. Richards asserts that “… there’s millions of people using various platforms, so they can’t watch everybody.”

Ultimately, these companies will continue to play a “significant role in our society,” according to the chair of the Wake County Board of Education, Chris Heagarty. However, as Heagarty highlights, the inner workings of the platforms’ algorithms still remain unseen, and the school board is dead set on the company being aware of all its content but  ignoring it.

All in all, this is a complex issue. But one thing is certain: if we continue on the same path, ignoring what many perceive as a social media ‘wake-up call,’ matters will only get worse. 

To quote Richards, “There’s no reason we should have to get to that.”

(Image credit: The Foothill Dragon Press)