nancy magee – Techdirt (original) (raw)

California Senator Nancy Skinner Falls For Junk Science Moral Panic; Makes Blatantly False Claims In Support Of Social Media Addiction Bill

from the legislative-nonsense dept

What you see below is part one of a two parter about a terrible bill in California. It started out as a single post, but there was so much nonsense, I decided to break it up into two parts. Stay tuned for part two.

You may recall last year that California, in addition to the obviously unconstitutional Age Appropriate Design Code, also tried to pass a “social media addiction” bill. Thankfully, at the last minute, that bill was killed. But, this year, a version of it is back and it has tremendous momentum, and is likely to pass. And it’s embarrassing. California legislators are addicted to believing utter nonsense, debunked moral panic stories, making themselves into complete laughingstocks.

The bill, SB 680, builds on other problematic legislation from California and basically makes a mess of, well, everything. The short explanation of the bill is as follows:

This bill would prohibit a social media platform, as defined, from using a design, algorithm, or feature that the platform knows, or by the exercise of reasonable care should have known, causes child users, as defined, to do any of certain things, including experience addiction to the social media platform.

What the bill will actually do is enable it so that social media companies can be fined if any kid that uses them gets an eating disorder, inflicts harm (on themselves or others), or spends too much time on social media. That’s basically the law.

Now, the framers of the law will say that’s not true, and that the law will only fine companies who “should have known” that their service “caused” a child to do one of those three things, but no one here was born yesterday. We’ve seen how these things are blamed on social media all the time, often by very angry parents who need to blame someone for things that (tragically) many kids have dealt with before social media ever existed.

Social media is the convenient scapegoat.

It’s a convenient scapegoat for parents. For teachers. For school administrators. For the media. And especially for grandstanding politicians who want headlines about how they’re saving the children, but don’t want to put in the hard work to understand what they’re actually doing.

Remember, multiple recent studies, including from the American Psychological Association and the (widely misrepresented) Surgeon General of the US, have said there is no causal evidence yet linking social media to harmful activity. What the reports have shown is that there is a small number of children who are dealing with serious issues that lead them to harmful behavior. For those children, it is possible that social media might exacerbate their issues, and everyone from medical professionals to teachers to parents, should be looking for ways to help that small number of children impacted.

That’s not what any of these laws do, however.

Instead, they assume that this small group of children, who are facing some very real problems (which, again, have not been shown to have been caused by social media in any study) represents all kids.

Instead, the actual research shows much more clearly that social media is beneficial to a much larger group of children, allowing them to communicate and socialize. Allowing them to have a “third space” where they can interact with their peers, where they can explore interests. The vast majority of teens find social media way more helpful than harmful. In some cases, it’s literally life-saving.

But, parents, teachers, principals, politicians and the media insist that someone must be to blame whenever a child has an eating disorder (which pre-existed social media) or dies by suicide (ditto). And social media must be the problem, because they refuse to explore their own failings or society’s larger failings.

Look no further than the absolutely ridiculous hearing the California Assembly recently held about the bill. It’s a hearing that should be cause for Californians to question who they have elected. A hearing where one Assemblymember literally claimed that we should follow China’s lead in regulating social media (we’ll get to that in part II).

The hearing kicked off with the Senate Sponsor, Nancy Skinner, making up nonsense about kids and social media that has no basis in fact:

I think many of you are aware that we are facing an unprecedented and urgent crisis amongst our kids where there’s high levels of social media addiction. The numbers of hours per day that many of our young people spend on average on social media is beyond, at least my comprehension, but the data is there. There’s high levels of teen suicides and those that increase in teen suicides, while some people think about the pandemic, have been steadily increasing over the past 10 to 12 years. And in effect, began with the onset, that increase with onset of much of the social media. We also have evidence of the very easy ability for anyone, which includes our youth, to purchase fentanyl and other illegal substances on via social media sites as well as illegal firearms. And in fact, on the illegal substances like fentanyl laced drugs, it is quicker to procure such a substance on social media than it is to use your app and get your Lyft or Uber driver.

So, look, someone needs to call bullshit on literally every single point there. Regarding suicide data, we highlighted that today’s suicide rates are still noticeably below the highs in the 1990s. Yes, they’ve gone up over the last few years, but they are still below the highs, and why isn’t anyone looking at what caused suicide rates to drop so low in the late 90s and early 2000s. Perhaps it was because we weren’t living in a constant hellscape in which grandstanding politicians are screaming every day about how horrible everything is?

But, really, I need to absolutely call bullshit on the idea that you can order fentanyl faster than you can get a Lyft or an Uber driver. Because that’s not true. There is no world in which that is true. There is no reasonable human being on this planet who believes that it’s quicker to get fentanyl online than to get an Uber. That’s just Senator Nancy Skinner making up things to scare people. Shameful.

It’s reminiscent of the similar bullshit scare tactics used by supporters of FOSTA, who claimed that you could order a sex trafficking victim online faster than you could order a pizza. That was made up whole cloth, but it was effective in getting the law passed. Apparently Skinner is using the same playbook.

Skinner continues to lie:

if we look at teenage girls in particular or adolescent girls, that researchers posing as teen girls on social media platforms were directed to content on eating disorders every 39 seconds, regardless of any request or content request by the teen. So in other words, just the algorithm, the feature or design of the platform directed that teen girl to eating disorder content every 39 seconds and to suicide-oriented content less frequently, but still with high frequency.

So, again, this isn’t true. It’s a moral panic misreading of an already questionable study. The study was done by the organization the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which is very effective at getting headlines, generating moral panics and getting quoted in the news (and at getting donations). What it’s not good at is competent research. You can read the “report” here, which is not “research,” as Senator Skinner implies. And even its highly questionable report does not even come close to saying what Skinner claims.

CCDH’s study was far from scientific to start with. They set up JUST EIGHT accounts on TikTok (not other sites) pretending to be 13-year-olds (two each in 4 different countries) and gave half of them usernames that includes the phrase “loseweight.” This is not scientific. The sample size is ridiculously small. There are no real controls unless you consider that half the accounts didn’t have “loseweight” in their name. There is no real explanation for why “loseweight” other than they claim it’s typical for those with eating disorders to make a statement regarding the disorder in their usernames.

Then, they had the researchers CLICK ON AND LIKE videos that the researchers themselves decided were “_body image or mental health_” related (which is not just eating disorder or suicide related content). In other words, THE RESEARCHERS TRAINED THE ALGORITHM THAT THEY LIKED THIS CONTENT. Then acted surprised when the accounts that clicked on and liked “body image” or “mental health” videos… got more “mental health” and “body image” videos.

As for the 39 second number, that is NOT (as Skinner claimed) how often kids see eating disorder content. Not even close. 39 seconds is how often users might come across content that CCDH themselves defined as “body image” or “mental health” related. NOT “suicide” or “eating disorder” content. In fact, the report says the fastest any of their test accounts saw (again, a self-classified) “eating disorder” content was only after eight minutes. They don’t say how long it took for the other accounts.

Not every 39 seconds.

Nancy Skinner is lying.

And, again, CCDH themselves decides how they classify the content here. While CCDH includes just a few screenshots of TikTok content that they classified as problematic (allowing them to cherry pick the worst). But even then, they seem to take a VERY broad definition of problematic content. Many of the screenshots seem like… general teen insecurities? I mean, this is one of the examples they show of “eating disorder” content:

Others just seem like typical teen angst and/or dark humor. These politicians are so disconnected from teens and how they communicate, it’s ridiculous. I’ve mentioned it before, though I don’t talk about it much or in detail, but a friend died by suicide when I was in high school. It was horrible and traumatic. But also, if any of us had actually known that he was suffering, we would have tried to get him help. Some of the TikTok videos in question may be calls for help, where people can actually help.

But this bill would tell kids they need to suffer in silence. Bringing up suicidal ideation. Or insecurities. Or just talking about mental health, would effectively be banned under this bill. It would literally do the exact opposite of what grandstanding, disconnected, lying politicians like Nancy Skinner claim it will do.

Back to the CCDH report. Incredibly, the report claims that PHOTOS OF GUM are eating disorder content, because gum “is used as a substitute for food by some with eating disorders.”

Have no fear, Senator Skinner: if this bill becomes law, you’ll have saved kids across the state from… seeing gum? Or adding a hashtag that says #mentalhealthmatters.

This is a joke.

Senator Skinner should issue a retraction of her statement. And pull the bill from consideration.

Of course, the context in which this is all presented by Senator Skinner is that social media companies are doing “nothing” about this. But, again, this study was only about TikTok, one social media company. And, the report that she misread and misquoted makes it pretty clear that TikTok is actively trying to moderate such content, and the kids are continually getting around those moderation efforts. In the report, it discusses how eating disorder hashtags often have “healthy” discussions (Skinner ignores this), and then says (falsely) that TikTok “does not appear to… moderate” this content.

But, literally two paragraphs later, the very same report says that kids are constantly evading moderation attempts to keep talking about eating disorders:

Users evade moderation by altering hashtags, for example by modifying #edtok to #edtøk. Another popular approach for avoiding content moderation is to co-opt singer Ed Sheeran’s name, for instance #EdSheeranDisorder.

So, if TikTok is not moderating this content… why are kids getting around this non-existent moderation?

Indeed, other reports actually showed that TikTok appeared to be dealing with eating disorder content better than earlier platforms, in that it was inserting healthy content into such discussions, about how to eat and exercise in a healthy way. Of course, under CCDH’s definition, this is all evil “body image” content, which Nancy Skinner would prefer be silenced across the internet. How dare kids teach each other how to be healthy. Again, let them suffer in silence.

Meanwhile, as we’ve discussed, actual research from actual experts, have said that forcing social media to hide ALL discussion of eating disorders actually puts children at much greater risk. Because those with eating disorders still have them, and they tend to go to deeper, darker parts of the web. Yet, when those discussions happened on mainstream social media, it also allowed for the promotion of content to help guide those with eating disorders to recovery, including content from those who had recovered and sought to help others. But, under this bill, such content HELPING those with eating disorders would effectively be barred from social media.

Going back to what I said above about my friend in high school, if only he had spoken up. If only he had told friends that he was suffering. Instead, we only found out when he was dead. This bill will lead to more of that.

Bill 680 takes none of that nuance into account. Bill 680 doesn’t understand how important it is for kids to be able to talk and connect.

All based on one Senator misreading what is already junk science.

Senator Skinner’s statement is almost entirely false. What little is accurate is presented in a misleading way. And the underlying setup of the bill completely misunderstands children, mental health, body image issues, and social media. All in one.

It’s horrifying.

Skinner’s star witness, incredibly, is Nancy Magee, the superintendent of San Mateo schools. If you recognize that name, it’s because we’ve written about her before. She’s the superintendent who filed the most ridiculous, laughable, embarrassing lawsuit against social media companies accusing them of RICO violations, because some kids had trouble getting back into regular school routines immediately after they came back from COVID lockdowns. RICO violations!

Of all the superintendents in all of California, can’t you at least pick the one who hasn’t filed a laughably ridiculous joke of a lawsuit against social media companies that similarly misread a long list of studies, to try to paper over her own districts failures to helps kids deal with the stress of the pandemic?

I guess if you’re going to misread and lie about the impact of social media, you might as well team up with someone who has a track record of doing the same. Magee’s statement, thankfully, isn’t as chock full of lies and fake stats, but is mostly just general fear mongering, noting that teenagers use social media a lot. I mean, duh. In my day, teens used the phone a lot. Kids communicate. Just like adults do.

There is, also, Anthony Liu, from the California Attorney General’s office. You’d hope that he would bring a sense of reality to the proceedings, but he did not. It was just more fear mongering, and nonsense pretending to be about protecting the children. Liu had a colleague with him, bouncing a child on her lap as a prop, where Skinner chimed in, literally saying that it was an example of “the child we are trying to protect,” leading an Assemblymember to say “how can we say no?” to (apparently?) whichever side brings in more cute kids.

And, that’s where we’re going to end part I. Things went totally off the rails after that, when two speakers spoke out against the bill, and a bunch of Assemblymembers on the Committee completely lost their minds attacking the speakers, social media, children, and more.

Still, we’ll close with this. If Senator Nancy Skinner had any integrity, she’d retract her statement, admit she’d been too hasty, admit that the evidence does not, in fact, support any of her claims, and suggest that this bill needs a lot more thought and a lot more input from experts, not grandstanding and moral panics.

I’m not holding my breath, because you might not be able to order fentanyl as quick as you can order an Uber, but you sure as hell can expect a California state elected official to cook you up a grandstanding, moral panic-driven monstrosity with about as much effort as it takes to order an Uber.

Filed Under: addiction, body image, california, content moderation, eating disorder, junk science, mental health, nancy magee, nancy skinner, sb 680, social media, suicide
Companies: ccdh, tiktok

Silicon Valley School District Files Laughable, Vexatious RICO Claims Against Big Social Media… But Not Facebook Or Instagram

from the just-make-an-angry-youtube-video-or-something dept

Back in January, we wrote about the Seattle public school district filing an absolutely laughable lawsuit against basically all of big social media, based on a bunch of misread and misunderstood studies, and general moral panic that social media must be “bad” for kids. In February, we wrote about the school district in Mesa, Arizona filing a very similar lawsuit (using the same law firm). We wondered if we were going to see a flood of such lawsuits.

Also, we pointed out how these school districts were effectively announcing publicly to all parents that they had given up on actually educating their children on how to understand the modern digital world, and were basically caving to moral panics and admitting that they don’t know how to prepare children for today’s world. As I noted in both of those stories, if I were a parent in either district, I would be furious.

Well, be careful what you wish for, because last week, at least two* more such lawsuits were filed, including one by the San Mateo County Board of Education, which oversees the school district that my children attend. So, yeah, now I’m furious. As I told the superintendent in an email last week, I had been actually quite happy with how the schools my children attended had taught digital citizenship, and how to they seemed to have good programs designed to prepare kids for a digital future. But, filing such a ridiculous lawsuit is the opposite of that and now has me concerned that the district is so unprepared to teach kids about the modern world that I should be worried about their education.

It gets even worse. The San Mateo County lawsuit is similar to the ones filed in Seattle and Mesa, but with a few differences. While both of the others mainly focused on (already laughable) “public nuisance” claims, San Mateo… also includes a RICO claim.

Yes. RICO.

As regular readers of Techdirt well know, IT’S NOT RICO, DAMMIT. It’s never RICO. But it’s especially not RICO in this case. RICO means something. It most certainly does not mean “a lot of these companies have been bad for the kids I’m supposed to be teaching how to live in the modern world, which we can only support by cherry picking and misrepresenting evidence.” You need to show conduct of an enterprise, through a pattern of racketeering activity called predicate acts causing injury to the plaintiff’s business or property. And you need to show all five elements in there.

Here’s how the San Mateo County Board of Education — which is responsible for educating my children — handle that. They claim each of the defendants (Google, Snapchat, and TikTok — but not Meta, which we’ll get to, and not Twitter, which, hrmph, I guess I’ll also get to) have formed “an association-in-fact” with the “shared goal… to preserve and enhance the market for its social media platforms and RICO Defendants’ own profits.” I mean, under that definition companies in any industry have “an association.” But that’s not how the law actually works.

What about the “pattern of racketeering?” Well… again, they basically say these companies wanted more users, and that’s racketeering. Oh, and then at the very end they just randomly accuse these social media companies of wire fraud. I wish I were joking.

RICO Defendants had the common purpose of preserving and enhancing the market for their platforms and for youth as consumers for RICO Defendants’ own profits, regardless of the truth, the law, or the health consequences to the American people, including Plaintiffs’ students and the communities Plaintiffs serve.

RICO Defendants deceived consumers to use RICO Defendants’ platforms while concealing and/or suppressing the relevant findings and research. RICO Defendants deceived consumers, particularly parents and children, adolescents, and teenagers, by claiming that they did not market to children, adolescents, and teenagers, while engaging in marketing and manipulation of their platform algorithms with the intent of causing children, adolescents, and teenagers to engage in excessive use of their platforms, regardless of the health or safety concerns.

RICO Defendants achieved their common purpose through co-conspirators’ actions in deceiving consumers, regulators, and the general public about the dangerous nature of their platforms. Through the enterprise, RICO Defendants engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity consisting of numerous acts of racketeering in the Northern District of California and elsewhere, including mail fraud and wire fraud, indictable offenses under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 1343.

That’s not how any of this works.

How about the “predicate acts?” Well, here they claim that social media companies… use the mail “to mislead the public.”

From a time unknown and continuing until the time of filing of this complaint, in the Northern District of California and elsewhere, RICO Defendants and others known and unknown did knowingly and intentionally devise and intend to devise a scheme and artifice to mislead, and obtain money and property from, members of the public by means of material false and misleading pretenses, representations, and promises, and omissions of material facts, knowing that the pretenses, representations, and promises, were false when made.

The “mail fraud” and “wire fraud” seem to be based on the laughable claim that these companies… sent promotional material through the mail. Really.

For the purpose of executing and attempting to execute the scheme and artifice described herein, RICO Defendants and their co-conspirators would and did: knowingly place and cause to be placed in any post office or authorized depository for mail matter, matters and things to be sent and delivered by the United States Postal Service (and its predecessor, the United States Post Office Department); took and received therefrom such matters and things; and knowingly caused to be delivered by mail according to the direction thereon, and at the place at which it is directed to be delivered by the person to whom it is addressed, any such matter and thing, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1341.

They also fail to plead how any of these harmed SMCBoE’s business or property, meaning they didn’t actually plead all the elements of RICO anyway.

After reading this, I asked defense attorney, and RICO specialist, Ken White whether he thought the lawsuit, and especially the RICO claims had any merit. Ken did not hold back:

It’s a mish-mash of junk science, nanny-statism, and pro-se-style and likely sanctionable legal buffoonery. The RICO claims are preposterous and betray the vexatious intent of the entire — pun definitely intended — enterprise. This is the worst that modern pandering, performative litigation has to offer. Jesus, just make an angry YouTube video or something. This is exactly why judges need to be much more aggressive sanctioning lawyers and reporting them to the bar.

The RICO claims are definitely the most preposterous, but that doesn’t mean the other parts of the lawsuit are any better. As Ken notes, it’s full of junk science. It takes correlations to be proved causation (despite tons of evidence to the contrary — such as the fact that adolescent suicide rates were way higher in the 1980s and 90s than they are today). It cherry picks unsubstantiated claims regarding social media and focuses on extreme cases that have been overplayed in the media.

Just as an example, it calls out the infamous “devious licks” TikTok challenge that got a lot of attention in the fall of 2021. The complaint implies, without any evidence, that the devious licks challenge caused a problem in San Mateo schools based entirely on the headline in one school newspaper. Really. Of course, as we covered back in 2021, the whole devious licks thing was mostly a silly moral panic spread by adults. Kids in schools actually responded to the few cases of actual vandalism (which has happened in school probably going back to the beginning of school) and many turned it around and created the “angelic yields” challenge of getting kids to help clean up their schools.

The complaint also ignores that TikTok banned anything related to “devious licks” as soon as it started getting any attention. It was moral panic reporting from news reporters and adults that spread the concept.

So why is the San Mateo County Board of Education suing the news?

There is, of course, the ever popular comparison to tobacco:

It is apparent that when the YouTube, TikTok, and Snap companies were faced with a choice about making a change, they decided to stay the course. They simply put profit over the health and safety of children. Like the public health crisis caused by Big Tobacco, the YouTube, TikTok, and Snap companies have endeavored to shift blame and shirk responsibility through a concerted effort to withhold and distort the facts. Despite their advanced knowledge of the disaster they are causing, the YouTube, TikTok, and Snap companies have made no meaningful attempt to address this exploding crisis. As they look for new and ingenious way to leverage their unmatched access to technology to keep children addicted to their platforms, Defendants feed their own addiction, to profits and ever larger user bases. Due to the YouTube, TikTok, and Snap companies’ unwillingness to address the crisis of their making, the San Mateo Board of Education and its Superintendent feel they have no other choice than to bring this lawsuit to ensure the health and safety of children in their care.

Except that almost every sentence in this paragraph is false. It’s embarrassing. First of all, tobacco has no redeeming value. Social media is about speech. Not smoking a harmful product. Kids have free speech rights as well, though apparently my local school board wishes to deny them of that right.

Second, all of these companies have large trust and safety and research teams that actually do tons of work to try to limit any harm, especially to kids. I already mentioned how TikTok stopped the spread of the “devious licks” concept almost immediately. The complaint ignores that.

The complaint also ignores copious studies that show most students get tremendous value out of social media, not harm. Just recently the Pew Research Center released a massive report showing how the vast majority of students found they benefited from social media, and only a small minority found it problematic. Or how about this massive study from 2019 of over 12,000 students, that could find no evidence to support the idea that social media made kids depressed.

Incredibly, the complaint does mention the recent Pew study, but totally misrepresents what it says. It does not mention how the majority of students found they benefited from social media, and only 9% said it had a negative impact on their lives. You’d think such a stat would be relevant. Instead, the complaint focuses just on how many teens say they use social media and don’t want to give it up, and then leap to insisting that this proves that social media is addictive and that the companies are nefarious.

But, uh, try asking that same question about… watching TV, hanging out with friends, or even reading books, and you’d likely get pretty similar answers. Kids do it because it’s fun and it’s how they socialize. Hell, ask the same questions about going to school. Indeed, kids go to school every day, and I’d bet they’d report that school leads to a higher level of depression than social media.

Maybe the School Board should be suing itself? Or at least, be willing to do the same kind of research that Meta did to try to learn about its own impact on teenagers’ well being. No, instead, it would rather stick its head in the sand and insist that it must be social media to blame for the school not being prepared to educate and take care of kids following a pandemic.

You’d think that these other studies might give the people behind this lawsuit pause. Indeed, I asked the superintendent if she had read those studies and if she had any comment on them. Instead, she passed me on to a San Francisco PR shop and said they’d answer my questions. I asked the PR guy in question on Friday. On Sunday he told me that his client (which appears to be the law firm, rather than the school board) would not debate this with me (I wasn’t asking for a debate, I simply said I was hoping he could explain some of the decisions, since they appeared incomprehensible). Despite follow ups to both the PR guy and the Board, asking for simple answers to straightforward questions, no further responses were given.

Specifically both of them also failed to reply to my question about who actually initiated this process: was it the school or the law firm of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy? The law firm put out a silly press release about it. It is a different law firm than the one that filed the Seattle and Mesa cases, but at least that law firm didn’t… do the RICO.

The only one of my questions that was answered by the Board in an FAQ they posted, was that this is (not surprisingly) being handled on contingency, meaning that the law firm isn’t getting paid unless they win this case. Which they won’t. So, really, this just seems like an attempt by a terrible, mockable law firm, which deserves to be sanctioned, to try to score some cheap advertising.

And, now, we get to the very, very notable absence of Meta (Facebook and Instagram) in the defendant list. It’s… you know… kind of a glaring omission, given that it’s the largest social media platform, and so many of the studies that the complaint relies on are actually about Meta’s platforms and not the ones in the actual lawsuit.

Incredibly, the complaint uses (a misreading of) Meta’s own research… against those other companies! There are literally 5 pages of the lawsuit talking about the research leaked by Frances Haugen about Meta. And, of course, yet again, this research is misleadingly presented and cherry picked.

In 2021, a whistleblower and former employee of Meta Platforms, Inc. (“Meta”), known formerly as Facebook, Inc., leaked documents to journalists at the Wall Street Journal and government officials. These documents showed that Meta was aware as early as 2019 that one of its platforms, Instagram, caused body image issues to worsen for at least one third of teenage girls on the platform based on its own research and analysis. These documents settled what scientists had long suspected about Instagram’s harmful impact on children, in addition to confirming that Meta was completely aware of this issue based on Meta’s own studies. The leak confirmed that Meta designed Instagram in a way to risk the mental and physical health of children because that is what makes Meta profitable.

Except… that’s not what the leak showed at all. As we’ve highlighted in great detail over and over again, the study actually showed that in every category they studied for boys, Instagram made more teen boys feel better about themselves than worse (by a significant amount). And in 11 out of 12 categories, they made more teen girls feel better, rather than worse. There was only one category in which more girls felt worse, and it was body image, where the breakdown was still pretty close to equal. And, the whole freaking point of the study and the internal report that Haugen leaked, was that Facebook found this one category making girls feel worse to be unacceptable. That’s why they called it out!

Even as the complaint highlights how Meta was carefully studying this to understand what was happening and look for ways to fix the problems, the complaint pretends that they learned this… and ignored it.

And then to try to tie all this research from Meta (who again, was not sued in this complaint!) back to the companies that were actually sued, the complaint literally just says the other companies are all the same… “on information and belief.”

Defendants’ platforms operate similarly or in the same way as Meta’s platforms. On information and belief, Co-conspirators were and continue to be fully aware of the negative consequences of their platforms and their effects on minors’ health. Co-conspirators intentionally designed their platforms to exploit children and leave them riddled with mental and emotional health issues. Co-conspirators have endeavored to shift blame and shirk responsibility through a concerted effort to withhold and distort the facts, saying one thing publicly while admitting privately that the mental health issues detailed herein are caused by their platforms. Co-conspirators have conducted research and analysis, and have compiled data and documentation further substantiating the harms they cause to minors, and have falsely represented that they would disclose this research. Co-conspirators have intentionally withheld this information from the American people in a coordinated campaign to protect their profits from public scrutiny.

On information and belief indeed. Once again, this is not how any of this works.

And, of course, this raises the question of why Meta is not included in the lawsuit. I asked the superintendent and the PR guy, and neither would respond. I wondered if it could have something to do with the number of Meta employees who are parents with kids in San Mateo schools? It’s possible, though YouTube is also headquartered in the county and it’s still being sued.

As for the absence of Twitter, well, Twitter was never quite as big as the other big social media companies and always much less interesting to teens anyway, so one way to read this decision is as something of an insult to Elon Musk and his social media toy. Twitter is barely even mentioned in the complaint at all with the only mention coming to note that TikTok was bigger than Twitter. But… much of the research on social media happened around Twitter, in part because Twitter was the social media app with the most open API (which has since changed under new management). So, once again, we’re in a situation where the complaint uses research done on other platforms to hold YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok to blame, despite little shown connection. As Ken White noted above, this is sanctionable behavior, and the kind of thing you expect in a pro se filing, not one from a formerly reputable law firm.

The only attempt the SMCBoE makes towards showing harm to the schools is by noting that… their own school districts weren’t prepared for the mental health crisis of the pandemic. Yes.

More than 8 in 10 public school reported that, due to the pandemic, students exhibited stunted behavioral and socioeconomical development. Sixty-one percent (61%) of schools perceived that general misconduct had increased. Schools reported substantial increases in the frequency of tardiness, skipping class, rowdiness, bullying, fighting, threats of fighting, use of electronic devices during class, and other classroom disruptions. Thirty-six percent (36%) of schools recorded an increase in vandalism.

And so we have to… sue social media? The same social media that… enabled your schools to stay open and relevant during the pandemic? The same social media that allowed kids across San Mateo County to continue to communicate with their social circle while they were locked down in their homes for over a year? The same social media — especially YouTube — that was critical to helping teachers continue to provide lessons to kids online? I know my kids were regularly assigned to watch science and history YouTube videos during remote learning, and many of those videos were fantastic! Way better than most science and history lectures I had in school.

That’s who you’re suing?

Like other school districts, Plaintiffs bear the cost of the increased need for youth mental health services. Operating under pre-crisis budgets, Plaintiffs have scrambled to reallocate resources to address the mental health crisis. Plaintiffs have diverted time and funds to hire additional health care professionals, to train teachers and staff on how to educate students on their mental health, to develop mental health curriculum and materials, and to keep students and parents notified and informed about mental health issues that arise.

Again, what does that have to do with social media? We had a pandemic. That’s been kinda stressful for everyone. And that’s true of kids as well. But social media actually helped tons of kids get through the pandemic and still stay in contact with their social circle.

Indeed, the complaint even admits all this:

During the Covid-19 pandemic, due to lockdowns, remote schooling, and physical isolation from friends, young people drastically increased their use of social media. One study explained its findings: “adolescents augmented their social media use, including general screen time.

But, then it blames all the mental health problems… on social media, and not the “physical isolation from friends” or the stress of, you know, a freaking pandemic.

This use of social media is accompanied by detrimental mental health effects

Again, studies show the opposite. The very Pew study that this complaint relies on to show that kids use social media a lot… showed that it did not have detrimental effects on the vast majority of kids.

Also, it turns out more people are absent from school… and somehow that’s also social media’s fault rather than a deadly, contagious virus.

Absenteeism also became a problem during the Covid-19 pandemic. Public schools reported both student and teacher chronic absenteeism increased compared to prior school years. Seventy-two percent (72%) of schools reported an increase in chronic student absenteeism compared to pre-pandemic school years.

The complaint details high rates of absenteeism at some of its schools, and makes zero effort to actually connect that to social media. It just acts as if it must be true, despite no reason to believe they’re connected, and many, many fairly obvious reasons to suggest that the pandemic is actually to blame.

The complaint also tries to connect bad behavior in schools to social media… and fails in almost hilarious ways. It mentions that since 2020 the entire county (which has a population of over 700,000 with between 85k and 100k enrolled students) there were… OMG… TWELVE threat incidents involving the internet.

Most egregiously, since 2020, Plaintiffs’ schools have had 72 Student Threat Assessment Training (“STAT”) Level 2 cases, 12 of which (16.7%) were a direct result of negative social media use.

Wait. Wait. Wait. So, with nearly 100,000 students, across three separate school years, you had… twelve incidents from social media? That’s an average of… four a year? From at least 85,000 students? I’m shocked it’s that low!

They also blame two hoax shooter phone calls… on the internet?

In addition to vandalism, social media has been tied to active shooter hoaxes. In October 2022, two San Mateo County high schools—Woodside High School and South San Francisco High School—had to go into lockdown when hoax phone calls to police departments reported possible active shooters on the campuses.

You don’t think it’s got more to do with the rise in actual high profile school shootings?

And, I mean, kids do stupid stuff like this. When I was in junior high school, a kid I knew from around the corner called in a bomb threat because he wanted to get out of a test he wasn’t ready for. We didn’t blame anyone, but him. Because he did it. Some kids are always going to do something like this. It happened before social media, and literally nothing in this lawsuit shows that social media has increased this kind of thing. Nor does it even attempt to link these claims to the internet, rather than just generally assuming they must be connected.

This whole lawsuit is a mess. And it’s a joke. And I’m sad because the people who brought this lawsuit are the people in charge of educating my kids. And anyone who thinks this lawsuit makes sense has shown a real failure. It’s a failure of critical thinking. It’s a failure of understanding evidence. It’s a failure of being carried away by a moral panic instead of evidence. It’s a failure in passing the blame. It’s a failure in not doing your damn job as educators.

It’s just shameful all around. I’m hoping more parents call out this nonsense. Yes, it’s difficult to manage schools these days, especially with all the nonsense culture wars and craziness. But any school board member who thinks this is how they should be spending their time will never receive my vote again, and makes me think it’s time to actively campaign against them in the future. They are failing our children.

* As noted above, this wasn’t the only such lawsuit filed last week. Bucks County, Pennsylvania filed one, as well. And, you know, it’s dumb too. Though, they did sue Meta as well. And went with the whole “public nuisance” claim like everyone else, but weren’t so crazy to go for the RICO nonsense. It’s still ridiculous and should fail easily in court, but this post was long enough, and frustrating enough that Bucks County gets off with just this one footnote paragraph.

Filed Under: covid, moral panic, nancy magee, protect the children, rico, san mateo, san mateo county, san mateo county board of education, social media
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