Old Forge School District sues social media platforms

Suit joins hundreds of other school districts nationwide who allege social media has harmed their students

OLD FORGE, Pa. — A school district in Lackawanna County late last week joined the hundreds of schools nationwide suing many of the major social media platforms, accusing them of addicting children to their screens and wrecking their mental health in the pursuit of profit.

The Old Forge School District’s lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court, says the district of roughly 1,000 students needs “immediate funding” to deal with record rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation they claim are byproducts of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and TikTok.

The district cited a 2023 Pennsylvania Youth Survey that found that roughly one-in-five of the district’s sixth-graders and eighth-graders admitted they cut themselves. Some who engaged in self-harm also reported they were victims of cyberbullying. Cyberbullying was reported by more than half of the district students surveyed.

Other students from Old Forge admitted in the survey to acting out in school by threatening or harming peers or staff because of a social media meme or a “challenge” that appeared on their feeds.

“Identifying minors as easy prey and recognizing the huge financial upside of capturing their attention, the Defendants set their sights on the vulnerable, still-developing brains of minors, to maker them chronically habitual users of their social media platforms,” attorneys David Solfanelli and Richard Rinaldi wrote in a civil complaint “The Defendants’ success is readily apparent; just look at the millions of youths currently hooked on social media, forever gazing down at their cell phones, trapped in endless ‘feedback loops’ and manipulated by a host of other, algorithmically driven ‘features’ of the Defendants’ social media platforms. All so the Defendants’ can simultaneously capture an obscene amount of advertising dollars — Mission Accomplished.”

Old Forge is one of several school districts in the local region to seek damages from the social media companies for allegedly causing addiction. The subject is at the center of a bellwether jury trial in Los Angeles.

The cases brought by other local districts — including Hazleton Area School District, Carbondale Area School District and Pittston Area School District — have been consolidated with a massive ongoing litigation in California where hundreds of school districts, students and governments make similar claims.

The social media companies have denied the allegations in filings and are fighting the case in court. A three-month jury trial is slated to begin in June in Oakland, California.