By Graham Lee Brewer, Haleluya Hadero and Shawn Chen
Adapted for radio by S. Baxter Clinton
Two tribal nations are accusing social media companies of contributing to the disproportionately high rates of suicide among Native American youth.
Their lawsuit filed March 9th 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.
Gena Kakkak, chairwoman of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, added “Enough is enough. Endless scrolling is rewiring our teenagers’ brains. 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.”
Social media companies are accused of 'deliberate misconduct.'
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 US school districts, states, cities and other entities, claiming that TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube exploit children and adolescents with features that keep them constantly scrolling and checking their accounts.
New York City, its schools and public hospital system accuse the platforms of fueling a childhood mental health crisis that's disrupting learning and draining resources. School boards in Ontario, Canada, claim teachers are struggling because platforms designed for compulsive use "have rewired the way children think, behave, and learn.”
The Associated Press reached out to the companies for comment. Google said “the allegations in these complaints are simply not true."
Native children are uniquely stressed out.
Native Americans experience higher rates of suicide than any other racial demographic in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, jumping nearly 20% from 2015 to 2020 compared with a less-than 1% increase among the overall U.S. population.
Mental health care is already difficult to access from remote locations, and generations of colonization and social stigma create more barriers, particularly when the care isn’t culturally appropriate, advocates say.
About 87% of people who identify as Native American don’t live on an Indian reservation, according to the 2020 U.S. Census, and social media can help them connect with tradition, culture and other tribal communities.
Andrea Wiglesworth said, “they also might experience discrimination online. And social media companies don’t always have great, helpful policies for managing that.”
Wiglesworth is an enrolled member of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation and Shawnee Tribe who researches stress in Native populations at the University of Minnesota.
