What is a Class Action Lawsuit?
Social media platforms have a huge audience of young users, which comes with the responsibility to ensure their safety. Unfortunately, these platforms have hidden the negative impacts on young users’ mental health. The impacts of social media addiction and the responsibility of companies for their products go beyond individual cases—it influences whole communities and schools.
Beasley Allen began filing social media personal injury lawsuits nationwide in 2022 for adolescents harmed by social media addiction. Additionally, our firm represents numerous school districts across the country in claims of nuisance and negligence resulting from social media’s harmful impact on education systems.
This multidistrict litigation (MDL) and the associated Judicial Council Coordination Proceedings (JCCP) involve some of the world’s largest social media platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok.
Beasley Allen attorney Joseph VanZandt serves in leadership on the Plaintiff Steering Committee for the MDL and is co-lead counsel of the JCCP.
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Davis S. Vaughn Principal Montgomery, AL -
Joseph VanZandt Principal Montgomery, AL -
Sydney Everett Principal Montgomery, AL
Digital Dilemma: How Social Media Shapes Youth Mental Health
Today’s teens are the first generation to grow up entirely in the digital age, with social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and TikTok being a big part of their lives. They’re tech-savvy and fluent in internet culture. Over the past decade, America’s youth has engaged with social media products at an exponential rate.
Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and TikTok are incredibly popular, with billions of users worldwide. A report from the Pew Research Center found that nearly half of U.S. teens are online “almost constantly.” This increase in usage is a direct and calculated effort by social media companies.
These social media companies do not charge users for their products but receive money from advertisers who pay a premium to target specific categories of users. In doing so, the companies generate revenue based on the total time users spend on the application, which directly correlates with the number of advertisements shown to each user.
The Dark Side of Social Media Addiction: Symptoms & Side Effects
Social media is a huge part of our daily lives, but there’s a downside to it too. A lot of platforms are designed to be addictive, which causes people to spend more time on them than they might realize. This habit can lead to social media addiction, which is becoming a bigger issue.
Just like other forms of addiction, social media addiction can lead to various mental health problems, including:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, etc.)
- Body dysmorphia (obsessive focus on a perceived flaw in appearance)
- ADD/ADHD
- Lack of focus, inability to concentrate
- Self-harm, thoughts of self-harm
- Suicide, attempted suicide, suicide ideation
Identifying when someone might be too involved with social media, especially young people, is really important. Signs include thinking about it all the time, spending more and more time on it, trying to use it less but not managing to, ignoring other fun or important things because of social media, continuing to use it even when it causes trouble, not being honest about how much they use it, using it to feel better, and not doing as well at school or in other areas because of it.
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