Now Mesa Public Schools Are Also Declaring That They Have Failed In Educating Their Children By Suing Social Media
from the this-makes-it-a-trend dept
Last week, we wrote about the positively ridiculous lawsuit filed by the Seattle Public School district against basically all of social media claiming social media was “a public nuisance.” As we noted, the school district appeared to be wasting taxpayer money, that could have gone to educating their kids, on this lawsuit that screamed out to the public that the school district had totally failed in educating their children how to be good digital citizens, how to use the internet properly, and how to be prepared for living life in the age of the internet.
And, now it appears that the Mesa, Arizona school district has decided to do the same thing. Using the same lawyers. The law offices of Keller Rohrback appears to be trying to carve out this corner of the market as their own: having public school districts waste a shitload of time and resources to publicly proclaim that they can’t prepare the children they’re in charge of educating for the modern internet world.
The Mesa complaint is, not surprisingly, similar to the Seattle complaint. It’s suing the same companies (really: Meta, Google, Snap, Tiktok). Like the Seattle complaint, it argues that social media is a “public nuisance.” Like the Seattle complaint, it says that Section 230 doesn’t protect the companies (it’s wrong). Like the Seattle complaint, it posts a few cherry-picked studies claiming that social media is bad for kids, and ignores more comprehensive studies that argue that opposite. Like the Seattle complaint, it goes hard in proving that Mesa public schools apparently are staffed by administrators and teachers who suck at educating children, and find themselves powerless against… entertainment.
In short, it’s pathetic.
The one main “difference” between the Seattle complaint and the Mesa one is that in Mesa they’ve added a “negligence” claim, saying that social media companies “owe” the school district “a duty not to expose Plaintiff to an unreasonable risk of harm….”
This is all laughably stupid, and not at all how the law works. I mean, it’s possible that the lawyers at Keller Rohrback figure that if they file enough of these lawsuits, eventually they’ll find a judge who lets the moral panic of “social media is bad for kids” overwhelm the actual legal issues, but it’s difficult to see it standing up to any legitimate judicial scrutiny.
Of course, now that we have these two lawsuits, it means it’s almost certain that they’re shopping for similar lawsuits. One hopes that other school districts will reject this nonsense. The whole point of these lawsuits is almost certainly to try to shake down the social media companies to get them to settle, but that seems unlikely.
Either way, if you’re a parent of a student in the Mesa public schools, you should be asking why your school’s administrators seem to be publicly admitting that they can’t teach your children how to deal with the modern internet world.
Filed Under: mesa, public nuisance, school district, schools, social media
Companies: bytedance, facebook, google, instagram, keller rohrback, meta, snapchat, tiktok, youtube
Comments on “Now Mesa Public Schools Are Also Declaring That They Have Failed In Educating Their Children By Suing Social Media”
I really do wonder if the Mesa school district approves of a lawsuit that essentially refers to its employees as incompetent.
Re:
It’s not really accurate to think of teachers as employees of the governing board. Though, glancing at the current membership, most of the board members do seem to have an educational background, which at least is better than when I was a kid, when it seemed like they were mostly just a collection of meddling religious conservatives.
(I don’t live in Mesa, but I live in Tempe, which borders Mesa and is more liberal; Tempe is where ASU is located. I have a favorable opinion of the Tempe high school governing board — one of the members is an old friend of mine — but don’t know anything about Mesa’s except what I read in this article and on their website.)
I may be in trouble
It is a bit concerning that it is possible to sue someone for being a public nuisance or even for being a bad influence on children. Judging by what my sister-in-law says, I may be in big trouble.
Re:
It’s possible to sue people for most things, that’s why America is knows as a vastly litigious society.
The question is whether courts humour this kind of thing or kick it out as soon as it faces a judge. Let’s see where this goes…
Sounds like Vexatious Litigation.
Vexatious litigation is legal action which is brought solely to harass or subdue an adversary. It may take the form of a primary frivolous lawsuit or may be the repetitive, burdensome, and unwarranted filing of meritless motions in a matter which is otherwise a meritorious cause of action.
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Reminds me of Jack Thompson, though to my knowledge, I haven’t heard anyone from this firm speaking or behaving as outlandish as Thompson used to do.
I know why, they have not figured out how to use the Internet to find approaches to dealing with their problems, and have not realized that the Internet is the biggest and most complete library in the world. If they had, they would be teaching the children how to carry out research using the Internet.
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I bet they could Google it… Oh, wait…
but social media is a public nuisance!
Start off by explaining to the kiddies that social media is a platform for delivering a product (the users) to the customers (the advertisers). Want to be treated like a product? Use social media! And then don’t whine about the results. You were warned.
In general, clue the kids in that when something is free, it ain’t. You’re just paying in a non-obvious way. Train them to look for that and figure out whether the payment is worth it.
Write this on the school chalkboard and keep it up forever: There’s No Free Lunch.
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Um… There’s this furry elephant-like thing outside that wants to tell you that There Is Another Way. Should I send it in?
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Lol. We’re seeing something similar to soda switch over to high fructose corn syrup and know exactly what is going to happen.
The Internet already went HFC’s, so many natives have enjoyed technology without the empty calories.
The GPT rush is just search engines going full HFC’s and schools already had an obsolete curriculum decades ago. Metal detectors became common place in the 1990’s, so any failures after are just diversions from admitting that it is not a place of learning.
Remote learning and homeschooling replaced the failing system(s) already, without the obsolete emotions and depravity. You can choose the best curriculums without the inept filler, fake grades or loss of purpose.
Let the high fructose corn syrup people make their own choices, just as it has always been. They still haven’t figured out the cause of obesity or failing health :p
Back in my day...
Kids are spending too much time listening to Jazz!
Kids are spending too much time listening to the radio!
Kids are spending too much time watching TV!
Kids are spending too much time on the phone!
Kids are spending too much time playing role-playing games!
Kids are spending too much time playing video games!
Kids are spending too much time on the (cell) phone!
Back in MY day, we didn’t HAVE X… and we liked it!
Re:
Jazz was repeatedly and convincingly alleged to be both harmful and decadent, and why you would defend it is quite disturbing.
TikTok is on china and is there not subject to any American laws
So this was the best they could come up with to replace ADA trolling?
“it posts a few cherry-picked studies claiming that social media is bad for kids”
Lots of things are bad for kids, which is why they don’t have rights to access everything and everything in life the same as adults do. We usually expect said adults to do something.
I’ve often said, the internet is like any city. It can be full of wonder and knowledge, it can be full of dark desperation and evil. It all depends on where you go, and how you use the resources. If you’re sending your kid out into it unsupervised and hoping everything will turn out OK, you’re probably going to be disappointed with what they learn. Social media is not always kid-friendly, stop using it as a babysitter.
Mike I disagree. I think parents should be happy the school district is admitting to being rampantly incompetent. I mean, it’s way better than them hiding it.
What I think Mesa parents should be doing is: looking into getting competent people in charge of educating their children (Although, I think think this might be anywhere from “really difficult” to “impossible” to achieve…)
The Internet
I work in the technology department at a school, and I would like to remind these other school systems that they are in complete control over how much internet access they provide to the students, and what websites they can use. Outside of school, it is absolutely none of their fucking business.
Giving full, unfettered, and unchecked internet access to children is a dangerous, and idiotic thing to do! It always has been.
If I were to drop my kid off in the middle of the city to do homework because museums and libraries are around, I would be arrested for child endangerment, the local PTA would point to me as an example of shit parenting, and child services would never let me near my kid again. I certainly could not start suing local businesses for not doing my parenting for me. The internet is far worse.
Throwing lawsuits at every website you think damaged your children while you happily provide access to them is just too stupid for words.
Welp. There’s more money being removed from education.
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