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Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram over youth mental health

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Re: Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram over youth mental health

#91

Post by mensetmanusman »

DueDilligence wrote: post #20

.. as a Seattle dad .. I fucking love this awkward yet clearly precedent-setting case. I know most of the board and the majority of us are fed up and taking the power we have to task and accountability. This has been in the works for over four years and we know the end game: new laws, adopted by other cities and states. .. it’s been a clearly focused project for over 4 years now. One of my friends is on the board. I…

They will just argue that the parents should not give children phones, which is actually something I agree with.

We need coordinated parenting on when to give children these devices.

Re: Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram over youth mental health

#92

Post by lordfrito »

slavboj wrote: post #61

School attendance is reliably associated with student suicide rate. We know it's causal because the association tracks random variations in the school year (snow days and make-up days, teacher strikes, differences in district calendars, etc). So forgive me if I believe their concern to be less than genuine. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/childrens-risk-of...

What is it that you're suggesting? That school attendance is a cause of suicide? That can't be... because if so then it's a miracle for all of us who made it before hand that we survived such a dangerous place and built the modern world and all.

Understand that any time you leave your house you run the risk of having a bad day. So for kids, who regularly leave their house for school, it makes sense that the primary factor leading to a "bad day" for a kid would occur in or around campus. And I can totally believe there's a causal link between when someone chooses to commit suicide and the kind of day they were having.

I'm just not sure what you're suggesting. Are we all just supposed to stay home? That's not workable. You have to face the world.

Also you take a chance every time you get in your car to go anywhere. Doesn't mean we should avoid automobiles.

I'm not trying to be sarcastic... Just trying to understand the angle you're after with this stat.

Re: Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram over youth mental health

#93

Post by idopmstuff »

tempsy wrote: post #75
finnh wrote: post #62

Seattle Public Schools has seen enrollment drop 30% (!!!) over the past couple years because it is an utter shambles [0]. (correction: many schools have that level of decline or higher, but the decline district-wide is much lower). Cancelling as many advanced classes as possible, without grandfathering, so (eg) my two sons were both forced to repeat a year of math when they cancellled year-up math. An administration…

i don’t know anything about the other issues facing the school but to say social media addiction is a “dumb” thing to address seems incredibly naive to me. growing up is hard enough as it is and social media absolutely can be detrimental to mental health if used excessively. imo the only reason we haven’t properly addressed the issue as a society is because it’s incredibly difficult to “prove” from a research perspec…

Social media addiction is an important thing to address, but a school district filing lawsuits against social media companies just seems like the worst possible way to address it.

This is an organization whose entire purpose is educating kids. If they want to address social media addiction, why on earth would they not start by educating kids about it?

Re: Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram over youth mental health

#94

Post by LarryMullins »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #82
LarryMullins wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attending school might increase the suicide rate, but education doubtlessly has more than enough upsides to offset that harm. TikTok though? I don't think so. No upside of TikTok can compare to the upside of receiving an education.

How many educated kids are worth 1 suicide? I mean this quite seriously because utilitarian body count calculations are made by the US government all the time, especially in the context of transportation infrastructure. What's a good multiplyer? 10000 kids educated per suicide?

Even if suicides were a thousand times more common, I think the advantages of an educated population would still favor keeping schools open.

Of course if practical measures can be taken today which suppress the suicide rate while still compelling kids to receive educations, I support those measures. But to do away with compulsory schooling to suppress the suicide rate is throwing the baby out with the bath water. With TikTok, there is no baby. It's all bath water.

Re: Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram over youth mental health

#95

Post by EarlKing »

shkkmo wrote: post #50
EarlKing wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their alleged standing is predicated on a single count of violating the Washington Public Nuisance Law, RCW 7.48.010 (see page 86 of their complaint[1])[2]. So their torturous logic is that somehow not only are the defendants' services addictive, but that the addiction thereof spurs students to engage in violent and/or disruptive behaviors that interferes with the enjoyment of school property and the safety of its em…

I think you are confused about what "standing" means, it is the "legal capicity to sue". It generally means being directly harmed in a manner that the court can redress with a favorable decision. So it is quite possible that the court will say SPS has standing but decide against them because of the vagueness of the public nuisance law.

No, I'm quite clear about what standing means, thank you. They're predicating their standing on this being a violation of a nuisance statute. I didn't say they don't have standing under that statute, just that the statute is unconstitutionally vague.

Re: Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram over youth mental health

#96

Post by EarlKing »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #58
EarlKing wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their alleged standing is predicated on a single count of violating the Washington Public Nuisance Law, RCW 7.48.010 (see page 86 of their complaint[1])[2]. So their torturous logic is that somehow not only are the defendants' services addictive, but that the addiction thereof spurs students to engage in violent and/or disruptive behaviors that interferes with the enjoyment of school property and the safety of its em…

> a "problem" that has a fairly clear solution: students with behavioral issues tied to use of social networking services that are disruptive to school functions can and should be expelled. Problem solved. That's not the problem, and that would be a poorly targeted and illegal solution if it were. You can't expel a child from public school for having a mental health problem.

And I'm sure you can point to the statute that violates. I'll wait.

Re: Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram over youth mental health

#97

Post by idopmstuff »

travisgriggs wrote: post #48

Lots of comments about this being the wrong group of people to initiate this. Others playing the “is it really the same thing” card. I find myself torn. They are often sound/reasoned arguments. But I also struggle because the state of play isn’t right either. Social media engagement is now one of the leading causes cited in divorces. My wife and I of nearly 30 years have to battle this ourselves. Something seems clea…

I think you've got it right - they're trying to address a serious problem that is absolutely worth addressing, but doing it with this kind of a lawsuit is indeed silly. Even if they win, it's not going to do anything meaningful to address the underlying causes of social media addiction in kids. As an institution that has access to these kids for ~7 hours a day, they ought to be able to come up with a more productive approach.

Re: Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram over youth mental health

#98

Post by incone123 »

jeffbee wrote: post #90
finnh wrote: post #62

Seattle Public Schools has seen enrollment drop 30% (!!!) over the past couple years because it is an utter shambles [0]. (correction: many schools have that level of decline or higher, but the decline district-wide is much lower). Cancelling as many advanced classes as possible, without grandfathering, so (eg) my two sons were both forced to repeat a year of math when they cancellled year-up math. An administration…

I'm skeptical of your 30% number. Their reports seem to indicate current enrollment of 51608 compared to a peak of 53627, down 4%. That doesn't seem out of line with demographic processes.

Linked article shows some individual schools losing more than 30%, but does not give an overall percentage.

Re: Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram over youth mental health

#99

Post by finnh »

jeffbee wrote: post #90
finnh wrote: post #62

Seattle Public Schools has seen enrollment drop 30% (!!!) over the past couple years because it is an utter shambles [0]. (correction: many schools have that level of decline or higher, but the decline district-wide is much lower). Cancelling as many advanced classes as possible, without grandfathering, so (eg) my two sons were both forced to repeat a year of math when they cancellled year-up math. An administration…

I'm skeptical of your 30% number. Their reports seem to indicate current enrollment of 51608 compared to a peak of 53627, down 4%. That doesn't seem out of line with demographic processes.

I'm going off the linked article, which is about multiple individual schools with that level of loss. But I appreciate the correction; I should have stated that number more carefully.

Re: Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram over youth mental health

#100

Post by LarryMullins »

zdragnar wrote: post #87
LarryMullins wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TikTok offers their service to people they know to be teenagers, during school hours, when those teenagers are inside the school building (with TikTok's tracking of users, they surely know it.) I don't expect this lawsuit to succeed, but it's not entirely without merit and I do think the school district has some standing if for no other reason than because TikTok is serving videos to, and accepting uploads from, stud…

Every school system sets its own vacation days, and home schooled kids don't share the same set hours or days as the local school districts. I don't doubt that the harms are real, but I do suspect that you are putting an unreasonable burden on tik tok here. What I'm actually most curious about is when did schools start letting kids have cell phones during the school day? I was in school roughly just before smart phon…

> Every school system sets its own vacation days,

You're missing the part where TikTok knows where their users are, and know when a thousand kids are clustered together inside of a known school building in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. It's not rocket science to figure out those kids are in school. They know it.

> home schooled kids

The inability to perfectly know when a kid might be "in school" doesn't make much difference in my eye. They could easily detect it most of the time, and probably do, but choose to serve those kids anyway.

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