Trustees passed a resolution approving a contract for legal services during the March 6 regular meeting.
The details
Several school districts nationwide, including Dallas ISD and Frisco ISD, filed a suit to recover damages from mental health harms to students because of social media use, RISD council Laticia McGowen said. The lawsuit argues that social media executives knew social media platforms were harming children but did not address it, McGowen said.
“We have heard from teachers in our climate survey responses that they want the district to do something about behavioral issues,” McGowen said.
The district has taken steps to address campus and district culture around student behavior discipline and mental health, McGowen said, including increasing behavioral specialists, limiting cellphone usage and working with the Legislature to improve the student discipline chapter of the Texas Education Code.
The background
The legal claims were first filed in 2022, McGowen said, and there is a multidistrict and multistate litigation against various social media companies.
The lawsuit claims social media websites are designed to be addictive when young people are in a critical developmental stage.
“The lawsuit is really to, hopefully, allow school districts to be able recover some of the cost that they’ve had to output to address these issues that have been caused by these platforms,” McGowen said.
During a 2024 congressional hearing, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the platform “builds industry-leading tools to find harmful content to take it off the services.” Meta owns Facebook and Instagram.
What else?
There is no cost for RISD to join the suit, McGowen said, adding that the district will only pay for legal services if they win the case, and the payment will come from the recovered funds.
