Two tribal nations sue social media companies over Native youth suicides

abcnews.go.com:

Two tribal nations are accusing social media companies of contributing to high rates of suicides that disproportionately affect Native American youth

Two tribal nations are accusing social media companies of contributing to the disproportionately high rates of suicide among Native American youth.

Their lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles county court names Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta Platforms; Snapchat's Snap Inc.; TikTok parent company ByteDance; and Alphabet, which owns YouTube and Google, as defendants.

Virtually all U.S. teenagers use social media, and roughly one in six describe their use as “almost constant,” according to the Pew Research Center.

But Native youth are particularly vulnerable to these companies' addictive “profit-driven design choices,” given historic teen suicide rates and mental health issues across Indian Country, chairperson Lonna Jackson-Street of the Spirit Lake Tribe in North Dakota said in a press release.

“Enough is enough. Endless scrolling is rewiring our teenagers’ brains,” added Gena Kakkak, chairwoman of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. “We are demanding these social media corporations take responsibility for intentionally creating dangerous features that ramp up the compulsive use of social media by the youth on our Reservation.”

Their lawsuit describes “a sophisticated and intentional effort that has caused a continuing, substantial, and longterm burden to the Tribe and its members,” leaving scarce resources for education, cultural preservation and other social programs.

A growing number of similar lawsuits are being pursued by USschool districts, states, cities and other entities, claiming that TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube exploit children and