4 Canadian school boards sue social media companies for $4.5 billion

By Barry Ellsworth

TRENTON, Canada (AA) - Four of Canada’s largest school boards are suing well-known social media parent companies for CAN$4.5 billion (US$3.32 billion) claiming the sites deliberately harm students, the boards announced Thursday.

Toronto District School Board, Toronto Catholic School Board, Peel District School Board and the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board filed suit Wednesday against Meta Platform Inc., owner of Facebook and Instagram, and Snap Inc., parent company of Snapchat and ByteDance.

The boards claim the sites use “exploitive business practices (to) maximize profits” at the cost of student mental health and welfare. The suit also wants the parent companies to rework their products to protect students.

The boards claim “the fallout to the boards from compulsive use of social media amongst students” is in excess of $4 billion.

“The lawsuit claims that social media products, negligently designed for compulsive use, have rewired the way children think, behave, and learn, leaving educators and schools to manage the fallout,” the boards said in a statement. “Students are experiencing an attention, learning, and mental health crisis because of prolific and compulsive use of social media products.”

The boards represent 600,000 students.

“A strong education system is the foundation of our society and our community. Social media products and the changes in behaviour, judgment and attention that they cause pose a threat to that system and to the student population our schools serve,” Duncan Embury, a partner and head of litigation at Neinstein, representing the school boards, told CBC News.​​​​​​​

Meta and Snap Inc. did not respond to media queries for comment.