Schools handed students laptops. Big Tech saw an opportunity.
Internal company documents now surfacing in a major lawsuit reveal that social media platforms — including YouTube, Snapchat, Meta and TikTok — deliberately designed school-facing products to hook students, not educate them.
YouTube’s own internal communications imagined a future where parents ask their kids, “Why aren’t you watching more YouTube?” Snapchat, meanwhile, was sending push alerts to students during class, nudging them to post photos of what was happening at school. Its own data showed 64% of users aged 13-21 were on the platform during school hours.
The consequences have been staggering. Nearly 1 in 4 teens now report watching pornography during the school day — much of it streamed on school-issued devices paid for by the federal E-Rate program, which pumps roughly $2.5 billion annually into public school internet access.
A new Harvard study adds further alarm: reading scores have been falling since 2013, precisely when schools began ramping up classroom screen time.
“The slowdown in learning coincided with a dismantling of test-based accountability and the rise in social media use,” the Harvard report concluded.
The Federal Communications Commission announced this week it will conduct a top-to-bottom review of E-Rate to ensure it is “supporting the types of good educational outcomes that Congress had in mind.”
Read more:
• FCC weighs overhaul of subsidies for classroom internet as Big Tech backlash grows
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