Utah school district set to take on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat

Jordan School District has been named as one of the main plaintiffs in a lawsuit that pits school districts across the country against the largest social media companies: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat.

The lawsuit stems from growing concerns about student safety with respect to social media use and the impact of the platforms on students’ mental health and wellness.

“This is based on the significant costs Jordan and other school districts have incurred as a result of the various harms that come from student use of social media, including the increased need for student mental health services,” a Jordan School District press release states.

Bryce Dunford, member of the district’s school board, shared how social media apps had negatively impacted his son Logan’s life.

He had been a model student and when Logan entered middle school his parents bought him a cell phone for his birthday to enable him to keep in touch with his family.

“Logan was not prepared to be sucked into the social media world that was waiting for him, nor were his mother and I aware of what was happening on the other end to suck him in. It became an obsession. It became an addiction, and we kind of lost him,” Dunford said during a press conference Monday at Columbia Elementary School in West Jordan.

“His grades dramatically declined, this from a student coming out of elementary school had been a perfect student. His sixth grade elementary teacher just ranted and raved about his academic success, and now he’s barely struggling to pass this class. We sat down with him, and it wasn’t just his grades. It was his whole life, his personality, something was consuming him, his view about himself, the world he was living in. That struggle went on for several years, and as his parents, we asked, ‘How can we help? What can we do?’ " Dunford said.

On his own, Logan decided to delete all social media apps from his phone. “Every single one of them. Cold turkey,” said his father.

“Then I watched a complete change come over here, and the student we knew in those early years came back, not just his grades, but his whole personality, his life, his image of himself, his happiness,” Bryce Dunford said.

While attending Bingham High School, Logan took five Advanced Placement tests and passed each with a score of 4 or 5. He recently graduated and was one of two members of the senior class honored with the Pick and Shovel Award, the school’s highest honor.

Bryce Dunford said he and wife accept responsibility for buying their son a cell phone. “But we expect everyone that has an influence in the lives of our children to act responsibly, to do what’s in their best interest and not do anything that deliberately harms them. My son stands as a witness of both ends of the social media spectrum.”

Dunford said he believes Jordan School District was selected among a dozen plaintiffs in the lawsuit because of its response to a rash of student suicides at Herriman High School in 2018 .

Jordan School Board President Tracy Miller said the California law firm handling the lawsuit against the social media companies was also familiar with Jordan School District’s participation in class-action lawsuit against e-cigarette maker, Juul Labs, Inc., that alleged it intentionally and harmfully marketed its products to children.

The primary claims of the lawsuit against the social media companies are negligence and public nuisance, she said.

“This is based on the significant cost Jordan and other school districts have incurred as a result of the various harms that come from student use of social media, including the increased need for student mental health services. As one of the 12 designated lead plaintiffs, also known as bellwethers, Jordan can be selected by the court to go to trial,” Miller said.

Miller said the Jordan District board’s priorities are student safety, wellness and student learning. “We see firsthand in our schools the impact of the mental health crisis among our youth. Scientific data shows that social media damages the health and wellness of children and disrupts learning. We have the responsibility to do all we can do to stop negative impacts,” she said.

While no one had specific figures on the school district’s spending specific to the impacts of student social media use, Jordan School District Superintendent Anthony Godfrey said in recent years, the school district has “spent millions of dollars, mostly on additional staff to help support students.”

Godfrey said with respect to the negative impacts of social media on students “it’s very emotional for me to think about the long term impact of a student missing out on educational and social opportunities because of... an obsession over social media.”

According to court documents, the lawsuit alleges “defendants’ social media platforms are defective because they are designed to maximize screen time, which can encourage addictive behavior in adolescents. As alleged, this conduct results in various emotional and physical harms, including death.”

In 2023, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a mental health advisory addressing social media use and its effects on youth mental health.

“We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis — one that we must urgently address,” Murthy said in the statement.

One Fordham University professor of law, quoted in a professional journal for school district administrators, said he believes the school districts’ chances of prevailing may be slim.

“Many, many products have adverse effects on children that create costs for schools. These costs include, but are not limited to, mental health problems for students. Without making any claims about relative magnitude, products that come immediately to mind include television shows, phones, sugary foods, sneakers and music. All of these products arguably harm children but also bring value — which includes enjoyment — to their users,” said Aaron Saiger, Fordham University professor of law, in the journal District Administration.

Logan Dunford, who will enter the University of Utah this fall on a full-ride merit scholarship to study environmental science, said removing his social media apps “was pretty hard. Actually, it still is kind of hard.”

Social media can provide a sense of validation, which can be “incredibly fulfilling, yet also not very genuine. So there is negative parts of it, but it is still something that I kind of crave,” he said.

Asked if he has concerns about returning to social media once he enters an unfamiliar college environment, Dunford said he does not anticipate he will have that urge.

He recalls his freshman year of high school when he was still on social media and “sort of excelling academically.” But he often turned in his school work “incredibly late and I was cheating. I was going online for everything which is not correct academically, obviously. I think about that now, and I feel kind of icky about it, because that’s never something I would do nowadays.”