San Antonio ISD joins national lawsuit over social media addiction | #childpredator | #onlinepredator | #sextrafficing

San Antonio Independent School District has joined a national class-action lawsuit accusing social media companies of harming students through social media addiction. Students’ resulting psychological challenges force districts like San Antonio ISD to bear the burden by paying for counselors and other mental health services, the suit alleges. 

The lawsuit, involving thousands of districts nationwide, is pending in federal court in California.

School systems allege sites and applications like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are designed to encourage addictive behavior in children and teenagers. The addiction causes emotional and physical harm, according to the complaint.

SAISD trustees voted Monday to join the litigation and contract with three firms, Thompson & Horton, Eiland & Bonnin and O’Hanlon, Demerath & Castillo, to represent the district. This district’s decision comes just two weeks after a pivotal ruling in which a Los Angeles jury found social media companies Meta and YouTube liable for causing addiction and harm to a 20-year-old.

Meta responded earlier this year to the lawsuits, claiming they place undue blame on social media companies for the complicated issue of teen mental health. Pointing to data showing depression decreased among 12- to 17-year-olds between 2021 and 2024, the tech giant claimed lawyers are ignoring the benefits of social media and changes the owner of Facebook made to protect teens online over the last decade. 

“Recent lawsuits misrepresent our commitment to creating safe, valuable experiences for young people. We stand by our record,” Meta said in a statement. 

Studies show teens with anxiety and depression spend more time on social-networking sites than their peers.

A study led by Johns Hopkins University researchers showed a correlation between social networking sites and depression. Another from the National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention at the University of Oslo in Norway showed the risk of self-harm among adolescents was higher for those who spent three hours or more daily on social media.

Districts have had to take on the financial burden of their students’ social media addictions, hiring mental health counselors, launching new intervention programs and working to fight cyberbullying, their lawyers allege. Millions of taxpayer dollars have gone to this effort, according to O’Hanlon, Demerath & Castillo’s website. Before SAISD signed onto the lawsuit, the firm already represented other Texas districts in this case and is still adding more to the lawsuit.

Under the contract between San Antonio ISD and the three Texas-based firms, the district only pays the legal teams if they win the case, SAISD attorney Pablo Escamilla explained at a board meeting last week.                                    

Damages to the district include monetary losses from students not showing up for school because of mental health struggles from social media addiction, Escamilla said. In Texas, school districts are funded based on how many students show up for class each day.

SAISD Board Vice President Christina Martinez emphasized the importance of investing any settlement funds back into student mental health resources. The trustees’ decision to pursue litigation comes as Texas school districts, including SAISD, have adopted policies to comply with a 2025 state law that bans students from using their cellphones during school hours.

Martinez added that the resources she hopes to fund would extend beyond the school day.

“I think about the time that young people are on their devices after school, in the evenings, and weekends, and those are the critical programs that a lot of times the district can’t afford to support anymore,” she said. 

Seattle Public Schools filed a 91-page lawsuit against the social media companies in January 2021. The San Mateo County Board of Education, located in California’s Bay Area, filed a lawsuit against the companies that own YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok in March 2023.

These became part of a master complaint, and over 200 other districts joined the suit in the first year. As of April 2026, thousands of districts and other plaintiffs nationwide have since joined the lawsuit.

Northside ISD became the first San Antonio district to join the suit in February 2025. NISD Superintendent John Craft told the Express-News at the time that the decision wasn’t “anti-technology.” It was anti-harm, he said. 

Like SAISD’s trustees, the Northside ISD board hired the three law firms to represent the district. Northside officials said they planned to use settlement funds to offer more expansive mental health counseling and other mental health services.

“I believe students need to become digitally literate,” Craft said last February. “But these algorithms have been very intentional in feeding a very addictive platform that we need to protect our students from.”

Last May, the Harlandale ISD board also joined the lawsuit; South San Antonio and Edgewood ISDs did the same in July 2025. 

Under the district-law firm agreements, 65% of any settlement would go to the school districts, and the remaining 35% would be paid to the law firms.