A California court allowed school districts to sue social media companies including Facebook and TikTok over accusations they harm the mental health of children and therefore force the districts to spend more resources to tackle such issues faced by students.
The judgment came as part of a multidistrict litigation that consolidated hundreds of complaints filed by school districts, local government entities, and state attorneys accusing social media platforms of harming children. The defendants in the case are Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Google’s YouTube, ByteDance’s TikTok, and Snapchat.
A motion was filed by defendants in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California seeking to dismiss the complaints from school districts and government entities. In a court order issued on Oct. 24, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers allowed certain claims related to harm to minors to proceed….