The Huron-Superior Catholic District School Board has joined several Ontario school boards in a legal fight against the parent companies of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.
More than a dozen Ontario school boards and individual schools have initiated lawsuits against the social media companies since March 2024, alleging the platforms are negligently designed for compulsive use and have rewired the way children think, behave and learn.
The Huron-Superior board — which has jurisdiction over 19 schools, roughly 5,000 students and 1,048 staff in the Algoma and Sudbury districts — is now claiming $70 million in damages, according to a statement of claim filed in Ontario Superior Court earlier this week.
The lawsuit appears to be the first of its kind filed by a school board in northeastern Ontario.
“We have joined the mass tort litigation against tech giants Meta, Snapchat, and TikTok for disruption to student learning and to the education system,” said Fil Lettieri, director of education at the Huron-Superior board, in a statement to SooToday on Friday.
“We are committed to the success and well-being of our students, the next generation of leaders, and this is why we have come together with school boards across Ontario to demand change and safer products.”
Most of the school boards that have taken legal action are a part of a group known as Schools for Social Media Change.
The group is described as a collective comprised of "school boards, schools, thought leaders, and organizations working together to demand accountability from social media tech giants to strengthen the education system," according to their website.
The school boards involved in the group — which include some of the province's largest boards, including the public and Catholic school boards in Toronto and Ottawa — are collectively seeking more than $8 billion in damages from the tech giants.
A motion for dismissal filed by the lawyers for the social media companies was struck down in court earlier this year — paving the way for the case to proceed to trial.
"The statistics, if true, and the methods and outcomes of social media on the learning environment reveal broad effects that impact not only the immediate access to the right to an education, but to the futures of many young people," wrote Ontario Superior Court Justice Janet Leiper in her decision, which was released in early March.
"It is arguable that an addictive product that interferes with the mental health and educational aspirations of students is a public nuisance that requires a remedy."
The lawsuits make a slew of allegations about how "negligently" designed social media platforms have disrupted the education system at the expense of students' well-being.
They allege that more time is being spent on addressing compulsive social media use among students, more money is going into the increased need for digital literacy and harm prevention, and that more resources are being spent on user issues such as cyberbullying and online sexual harassment.
Students also struggle to spot misinformation, the suits allege, pushing teachers to spend time and resources to help vet what students see on their social media feeds and prevent them from adopting harmful ideologies they are exposed to on the platforms.
The allegations in the lawsuits have not been proven in court. Meta, Snapchat and TikTok have all previously said they're committed to their young users' well-being.
A spokesperson for Snapchat told SooToday its platform was intentionally designed to be different from traditional social media because it opens directly to a camera, rather than a feed of content that encourages passive scrolling, and has no traditional public likes or comments.
“While we will always have more work to do, we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping close friends feel connected, happy and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence," the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for Meta, the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, said the company strongly disagrees with the allegations and believes the evidence will "demonstrate our commitment to supporting young people."
"We’ve developed numerous tools to support parents and teens, and we recently announced that we’re significantly changing the Instagram experience for tens of millions of teens with new Teen Accounts, a protected experience for teens that automatically limits who can contact them and the content they see," the spokesperson said in a statement.
"We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously in these cases.”
TikTok did not respond to requests for comment made by SooToday Friday.
- with files from The Canadian Press