Social media companies are paying $27 million to settle a Kentucky school lawsuit over social media injuries, records show.
Written by Diana Novak Jones
May 29 (Reuters) – A Kentucky school district has received a $27 million settlement from social media companies for allegedly fueling a student mental health crisis, with Meta Platforms paying the largest settlement of $9 million, according to records seen by Reuters on Friday that reveal the financial terms of the settlement for the first time.
Meta settled the lawsuit brought by the Breathitt County School District on May 21, a few weeks before a scheduled June trial, following earlier settlements by co-defendants Snap Inc, YouTube parent Alphabet and TikTok parent ByteDance. The terms of the agreements have not been disclosed in court.
Alphabet paid $2.01 million to settle the case; Snap paid $8 million and ByteDance paid $8 million, according to copies of payment agreements obtained by Reuters from the school district through a public records request.
The companies have denied the allegations and say they are taking extensive measures to keep teenagers and new users safe on their platforms.
When the settlement was announced, Meta, Snap and YouTube said they had settled the claims amicably. Attorneys for the plaintiffs said after the announcement that they were focusing on pursuing similar claims brought by 1,200 other school districts.
CASE OF BELLWETHER SCHOOL DISTRICTS
The Breathitt school district, located in rural Appalachia, accused the companies of designing their platforms to keep new users hooked, driving anxiety, depression and self-harm among students and leaving schools to suffer the consequences.
The school district wanted more than $60 million to cover the cost of combating the impact of social media on students’ mental health and to fund a 15-year mental health program to combat the problem. It also sought a court order requiring companies to modify their platforms to reduce addictive features.
Breathitt’s case was expected to be the first of the school district’s lawsuits, consolidated in federal court in California, to go to trial. It was being watched closely as a trial or trial case for the school districts’ claims in the hotly contested case. Judges and lawyers often use bellwether decisions to assess the potential value of outstanding claims and to guide settlement negotiations.
Breathitt is a small district that serves about 1,600 students in six schools, according to federal data, but the case includes much larger districts. The Tucson Unified School District in Arizona, a district of about 40,000 students set to go on trial in February, is seeking more than $1.1 billion to fund a 15-year mental health plan, as well as more than $100 million in compensation for time spent by teachers and staff managing the impact of social media. The Los Angeles Unified School District and the New York City public school system — which together serve more than 1.2 million students — also sued.
