Canada's top schools sue TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat

Canada's largest school boards announced Thursday that they have filed lawsuits against TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat worth 4.5 billion Canadian dollars (3.318 million U.S. dollars) for damages caused to their students.

The lawsuit accuses the four social networks of designing their applications to make them addictive to minors and maximize their economic benefits at the expense of the mental health and well-being of students.

They also point out that these platforms facilitate harassment, physical attacks, the spread of racist and hate messages, as well as misinformation.

And they add that the measures adopted by the country's schools to respond to the problems caused by these platforms are generating additional expenses for which they are requesting a total of 4.5 billion Canadian dollars as compensation.

“The defendants have acted in an arrogant, reckless, malicious and reprehensible manner without due regard to the well-being of the student population and the educational system,” states the lawsuit that has been filed by the Toronto District School Board, the School Board Toronto District Catholic, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board and Peel District School Board.

These four organizations, which are the largest school boards in the country, in addition to financial compensation, request that the companies responsible for the four platforms (Meta for Facebook and Instagram, ByteDance for TikTok and Snap for Snapchat) change the design of the applications.

“Students are experiencing attention, learning and mental health crises due to the prolific and compulsive use of social media products. The consequences of compulsive social media use among students are causing enormous strains on the limited resources of all four school boards,” the schools explained in a statement.