By Diana Novak Jones
May 29 (Reuters) – A Kentucky school district secured roughly $27 million in settlements from Meta Platforms and other social media companies over claims they fueled a student mental‑health crisis, according to records seen by Reuters on Friday.
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Meta agreed to pay the most at $9 million in the bellwether case for school districts, according to documents that reveal financial terms for the first time as terms of the deals had not been disclosed in court.
The operator of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp settled the case brought by Breathitt County School District on May 21, a few weeks before a planned June trial, following settlements by co-defendants Snap Inc, YouTube parent Alphabet and TikTok parent ByteDance.
The settlements did not require the companies to admit liability and include no agreements to make changes to the social media platforms.
The companies have denied the allegations and say they take extensive steps to keep teens and young users safe on their platforms.
YouTube agreed to pay $2.01 million to settle the case, and Snap and TikTok agreed to pay $8 million each, according to copies of the settlements obtained by Reuters from the school district via a public records request. YouTube also agreed to provide the district with special training on Google Classroom and other products.
Representatives for Meta, YouTube and Snapchat said in separate statements that the companies had resolved the case amicably and continue to focus on tools and features meant to keep users safe on their platforms.
Representatives for TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs also did not respond to a request for comment. They have previously said that their focus is now on pursuing similar claims brought by 1,200 other school districts.
BIGGER SCHOOL DISTRICTS ALSO SUING
The Breathitt school district, which is in a rural county in Appalachia, accused the companies of designing their platforms to keep young users hooked, driving anxiety, depression and self-harm among students and leaving schools to deal with the consequences.
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The school district was seeking over $60 million to cover the costs of counteracting social media’s impact on students’ mental health and to fund a 15-year mental health program to mitigate the problem. It had also asked for a court order requiring the companies to modify their platforms to reduce addictive features.
Breathitt’s case was slated to be the first among the school districts’ cases, which have been consolidated in federal court in California, to go to trial. Judges and attorneys often use bellwether verdicts to assess the potential value of remaining claims and guide settlement talks.
Breathitt is a small district that serves about 1,600 students across six schools, according to federal data, but the litigation also includes far larger districts.
Tucson Unified School District in Arizona, a district of about 40,000 students whose case is scheduled to go to trial in February, is seeking more than $1.1 billion to fund a 15-year mental health program, plus over $100 million in compensation for the time teachers and staff have spent managing social media’s impact.
The Los Angeles Unified School District and the New York City public school system — together serving more than 1.2 million students — have also sued.
Meta has warned investors that legal and regulatory blowback in the European Union and the U.S. over youth social media issues “could significantly impact our business and financial results.”
More than 3,300 lawsuits involving addiction claims against social media companies are pending in California state court. Another 2,400 cases brought by individuals, municipalities and states, as well as the school districts, are pending in California federal court.
(Reporting by Diana Novak Jones in Chicago; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Matthew Lewis and Edwina Gibbs)
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