FILE - Social media applications are displayed on an iPhone, March 13, 2019, in New York. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, April 9, 2024, two tribal nations accused social media companies including Facebook and Instagrams parent company Meta Platforms; Snapchat's Snap Inc.; TikTok parent company ByteDance; and Alphabet, which owns YouTube and Google of contributing to the disproportionately high rates of suicide among Native American youth.
“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.
"Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work," Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in a statement. “In collaboration with youth, mental health and parenting experts, we built services and policies to provide young people with age-appropriate experiences, and parents with robust controls.”
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. “I won’t speak for all Native people, but from my lived experience there is this sense of shared responsibility for the well-being of our community and community members,” she added. She said Indigenous people need to think about how they carry that commitment into the digital world.The science is still emerging about how social media affects teenagers' mental health.