The Santa Barbara Unified School District will join a class-action lawsuit accusing social media sites of knowingly causing harm to students through their apps.

District leaders announced on Thursday that they would be joining more than 1,500 school districts across the United States in suing Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat over claims that their social media apps cause mental health problems in teens.  

During a press conference at La Cumbre Junior High School, Superintendent Hilda Maldonado accused social media companies of prioritizing profits and competition over people’s well-being and connection.

Maldonado said that teachers and parents are seeing the mental health impacts as the effects of social media use seep into the classroom.

“We see students displaying social anxiety, isolation, cyberbullying and, sadly, sometimes this leads to suicide,” she said. “These issues rob our youth from essential opportunities to build the lifelong friendships and bonds that should protect and support them throughout their lives.”

A study by the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office found that children and adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media double their risk of mental health problems, including symptoms of depression and anxiety.

The same study found that students spend an average of 3½ hours per day on social media.

Maldonado told Noozhawk that educators have always had an issue with motivating and engaging students, but the problem has worsened since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

She said students struggled to transition back to the in-person classroom, and the popularity of social media apps did not help.

One way the district has tried to address the issue is through the “off and away” policy, which requires students to turn off their phones, smartwatches and headphones, and store them throughout the school day.

However, Maldonado said the school learned that students were still receiving notifications through their apps. Those kinds of notifications were supposed to be blocked by the school’s internet firewalls.

“Learning about the algorithms, learning that TikTok, Snapchat, all those companies were actually pinging our students during the school day was horrifying,” she said.

“We thought we had filters in place. We thought that everything that we tried to do to remove that, (the) firewalls, were stopping everything — only to learn that you know, not necessarily.”

In response to the mental health issues the district is seeing in students, Maldonado said that it has created a new tier of counseling to help with the general population of students.

The district already had psychologists in its schools and counselors for its high schools. However, the district has taken on extra costs as it tries to address what it sees as issues created by social media.

The school district has joined an ongoing class-action lawsuit and has hired an outside law firm, Frantz Law Group, to represent it in the case.

Joanna Powell, general counsel for the school district, said joining the class-action lawsuit is easier than filing a separate lawsuit. Additionally, the law firm handling the case works on contingency, and it does not cost the school anything to join.  

“This was … an opportunity to go on the offensive and really get at the root of the problem,” Powell said. “We heard a lot of press over the summer, and it coalesced with the conversations that we were already having within our district.

In regard to a recent settlement between Meta and states across the country, Powell said the settlement bodes well but said it does not address all of the companies being sued in the class-action lawsuit.

Meta settled with tens of states on Aug. 26, including California, and agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties. The lawsuit accused Meta of misleading the public about the potential harms its apps posed to minors.

As part of the settlement, the company also agreed to make changes to its platforms, such as disabling extreme makeup and cosmetic surgery filters, adding tighter age verification measures, night mode, and a two-hour daily usage limit that can only be lifted by a parent.

La Cumbre Junior High School Principal Bradley Brock said school staff are on the frontline and see the effects of social media on students firsthand.

Brock said one school counselor told him that roughly 70% of the students come visit her over an issue that started on social media. Even if the conflict started outside of school, the school still ends up dealing with the effects.

He added that students are also having a harder time focusing during class. Brock said students can multitask extremely well and use different apps, but they struggle to focus on one thing.

“To try to get them to focus on the task at hand, we’re implementing more paper and pencil and a balanced curriculum (alongside) digital tools,” he said.

Brock added that teachers and parents need to work together to monitor their kids’ phone use. He said he understands that many parents work long hours or work multiple jobs, so the two sides need to work together.

“We need to work together in partnership with our parents to also educate and help them to be aware of the detrimental effects that (phone use) can have,” he said. “Not only at home but how they carry that into school.”