Social Media a ‘Double-Edged Sword’ for Students, Judge Says

A California federal judge overseeing hundreds of lawsuits from public school districts against popular social media companies on Friday said the platforms are a “double-edged sword” that might be valuable for some students but cause real harm to others.

“I don’t know if they have a claim,” Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said of the school districts’ novel “public nuisance” lawsuits at an Oakland, Calif., court hearing. “But I do know that the challenges they’re facing are real, they are significant, and they’re all tied back to these platforms.”

Meta Platforms Inc., Snap Inc., TikTok Inc., and Google ...