Where Are The Parents?

While lawsuits against tech companies may be a logical conclusion to a real and existing problem It is still an unnecessary overreach of government authority that leaves out the real solution: Parents

The Anne Arundel County Board of Education has chosen to become the latest Maryland school district to file a lawsuit against major social media companies:

The Anne Arundel County Board of Education filed a lawsuit last month against social media groups Meta, Google, ByteDance and Snap Inc., alleging that their social media platforms have contributed to a growing mental health crisis among the system’s 85,000 students.

The defendants are the parent companies of the popular platforms Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat. The lawsuit, filed Aug. 24 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, accuses the social media giants of designing their apps to “attract and addict” younger users and adopting business models that profit off that addiction.

The school system joins others in Maryland, including Baltimore City and Howard, Carroll, Prince George’s, Harford and Baltimore counties, that have filed suit against social media companies this year….

…..The school system is seeking unspecified monetary damages in an effort to “address this decline in students’ mental, emotional and social health.” The school system has had to hire additional personnel and divert other resources to provide mental health services and teach proactive social media education as a result of the “exploitive and harmful” content the defendants directed toward its students, the lawsuit states.

“Students in our district and nationwide are experiencing a growing mental health crisis because of social media companies and their addictive platforms,” Superintendent of Schools Mark Bedell said in a statement. “Social media companies must take responsibility for their role in this crisis, which has made educating our students exponentially more difficult and compelled us to divert essential funding meant for education toward mental health programs.”

Anybody who is a believer in constitutional governance should have a problem with school systems or any agent of government filing a lawsuit against a company engaged in providing a media platform. The concept of a government entity actively trying to force a private sector business to do anything is troubling in general. When the government entity files a lawsuit particularly aimed at the Freedom of the Press as this one is, it creates a whole new level of problems.

This entire enterprise sounds more like a grab for cash like the tobacco lawsuits of the 1990’s than it does anything,

But the school systems that are suing the social media companies do have a point….

The toxic influence of social media on young culture is obvious. From the Tide Pod Challenge to jumping off the back of a speedboat and everything in between, social media feeds dumb and dangerous ideas to the masses.

It has also provided an avenue for students to bully other students at the speed of light, which sometimes ends in tragedy.

Just as troubling for the country as a whole is the fact that much of the political divisiveness of the last ten years can be traced to social media. Facebook and TikTok, in particular, have fed radical political movements on both sides of the political spectrum to the youth, who then interact with that content and receive more and more of that content. Want to know why the kids aren’t all right? This is one reason why.

But none of that justifies a lawsuit against the Social Media companies. Government entities have no Constitutional right to filter content on political discourse, nor do the right to suppress the speech of individuals no matter how heinous their views and behavior may be. Unless the content reaches the definition of obscenity, there is no compelling government interest in this no matter how much the Social Media companies are acting like bad actors here.

But that brings me back to the fundamental question here: Where. Are. The. Parents?

My kids are young. They don’t have phones or devices that connect to the internet except under very limited circumstances. So maybe I don’t totally understand how hard it is to keep this toxic stuff away from a kid in Middle or High School.

But why aren’t the parents of these kids talking to them about social media? Why aren’t they talking to them about what they see? Or what they hear? Why does the school system feel it necessary to step into a job that should be, rightfully, the parents?

….or is the problem that social media so toxified the parents that they don’t see the problem?

While I am cognizant that what happens on social media does not stay on social media, especially in regards to bullying, legal action against private companies to compel what they can and cannot share on their networks sets dangerous precedents that it will set for internet censorship for all Americans. Governments should not step in where parents bear the responsibility.

While the lawsuits may be a logical conclusion to a real and existing problem, it is still an unnecessary overreach of government authority.