By Lee Egerstrom
The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa has joined other Upper Midwest tribal nations in seeking court protection for Native young people who may be harmed by an addiction to popular social media platforms.
At issue is the explosive growth of social media platforms, often called apps, which have wide appeal to young people. Social media critics say this is contributing to a mental health crisis resulting in high levels of suicides among Native American youth.
In separate but related legal actions. Minnesota is among 33 states that have similar lawsuits against the social media giants. The suits are filed in California courts where the social media companies are primarily headquartered.
Among concerns in these legal actions are how ownership groups for the social media companies gather information on people and may use that against them or their countries.
More narrowly focused, the Fond du Lac Band and four other tribal nations are primarily concerned about protecting their young people from the social media companies.
Robins Kaplan LLP, a national law firm based in Minneapolis, filed suit in April for the Spirit Lake Tribe in North Dakota and the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota and the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota joined as partners in the suit.
The law firm has a special American Indian Law and Policy Group operating from its various Robins Kaplan offices across the country.
The Fond du Lac suit becomes part of this effort but the attorneys use Minnesota consumer protection law in this specific suit.
Defendants include the major players in the new technology programs including some, like Google, that are facing federal actions trying to end what are perceived as monopoly powers.
The defendants include Meta Platforms Inc., owners of Facebook and Instagram; ByteDance that owns TikTok, Alphabet Inc. that owns YouTube and Google, and Snap Inc.
Meta was formerly known as Facebook Co. It is primarily owned by founder Mark Zuckerberg. Snap has instant messaging programs. And TikTok is a special case drawing attention from governments and concerned groups around the world.
It belongs to ByteDance, a Singapore company that is majority owned by international investors. But it has original and close ties to China. Critics suggest it may gather information for use by Chinese authorities.
Several companies have responded to the state attorneys general suits saying they have taken steps to protect young users of their platforms.
Native American groups, however, have special reasons to be worried about the impact these social media programs may have on technology savvy young people.
The Robbins Kaplan suit “alleges that rampant social media addition for Native American teenagers is contributing to a worsening mental health crisis as suicide rates for this demographic are staggeringly higher than their adolescent counterparts.”
It cites figures from the Center for Native American Youth and from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showing those results. Native teen suicide rates are about 3.5 percent higher than the average for their peer group in the U.S. states, and is more than five times higher for female Native youth.
That is more specific than the multistate federal suit brought by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and his counterparts from other states. Their suits cite various state consumer protection laws as well as a federal children’s privacy law. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998, prohibits companies from gathering personal information on children under 13 years of age without a parent’s consent.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy discourages anyone 13 and younger from joining social networking groups saying they
may damage young people’s views of their “self-worth and relationships.”
Dr. Murthy wants warning labels placed on social media platforms stating that social media are linked with significant mental health harms for adolescents.
A CNN report on the tribal suit quoted Lonna Jackson-Street, chair of the Spirit Lake Nation, as saying, “Given historic teen suicide and mental health issues on our Reservation and across Indian Country, Native youth are particularly vulnerable to the negative long-term effects resulting from the intentional, profit-driven design choices being made by these social media platforms.”“Given historic teen suicide and mental health issues on our Reservation and across Indian Country, Native youth are particularly vulnerable to the negative long-term effects resulting from the intentional, profit-driven design choices being made by these social media platforms.”
A counterpart with the Menominee, Chairwoman Gena Kakkak, told CNN, “Enough is enough. Endless scrolling is rewiring our teenagers’ brains.”
Reaction to the enormous growth and the billions of dollars being generated worldwide by these mostly unregulated companies is stirring reactions from all from concerned groups. The collaborating Upper Midwest tribes offer documented evidence on what can happen.
