The Denver Public Schools Board of Education unanimously voted Thursday to retain attorneys to sue social organizations for damages over claims their platforms hurt students’ mental health.

The contract will entitle attorneys to 33.3% of any financial settlement.

“You would not have to outlay a single penny,” district General Counsel Aaron Thompson told the board.

Attorneys Kurt Goza, with Goza & Honnold in Kansas, and Joel Wright, with Kirton McConkie in Utah, provided a presentation to the board via Zoom.

Because social media organizations like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube rely on advertising to generate revenue and growing a company’s income necessitates users returning and staying on their platforms.

“God only knows what this is doing to our kids,” Goza said.

Research has shown that frequent social media use may lead to unrealistic body ideals – for men and women – that can lead to mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.

And TikTok has promoted disruptive challenges in schools that has included encouraging users to commit vandalization, theft and make false police reports.

“This behavior is not acceptable on any level,” Wright said.

The harm to students is not limited to just mental health. The ubiquitous nature of cell phones and students on social media also cuts into classroom instruction.

Goza cited teachers in Texas who said a cell phone ban gave them back five to 10 minutes of instruction per period.

Multiply that by the district’s roughly 4,700 classroom teachers and their salary and social media platforms exert a real cost on education.

“You’d be surprised the kind of economic impact that has on a school district,” Goza said.

While district officials have characterized it as a class action lawsuit, Goza said Thursday that school districts across the nation are pursuing individual suits like JeffCo Public Schools did on Sept. 14.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawsuit Denver Public Schools is joining claims the explosion in social media use in the past decade was orchestrated by social media platforms, accusing the tech giants of “maximizing youth engagement to drive advertising revenue.”

The suit also asserts social media organizations borrowed the techniques used by the cigarette industry to addict users.

The national lawsuit has more than 200 plaintiffs.

Social media use is pervasive among today’s youth with as many as 95% of 13- to 17-year-olds using a social media platform, according to the U.S. Surgeon General.

In June, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who visited Aurora earlier this year to discuss the nation’s mental health crisis, issued an advisory on the growing concerns about the effect of social media on adolescent brain development.

The advisory comes as the state grapples with suicide as the leading cause of death for youth and young adults, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health.

Nationally, suicide is the second-leading cause of death among those ages 10 to 14 and 25 to 34, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The shooting of two administrators at East High School earlier this year has elevated the attention given to mental health.

In Superintendent Alex Marrero’s comprehensive safety report – created in response to the East High shooting – he committed to providing at least one mental health professional for each of the district’s 209 schools. The district has more than 400 mental health providers who serve nearly 90,000 students.

The national litigation has the potential to be commensurate with legal actions taken against tobacco, vaping and opioid companies.

The social media lawsuit comes amidst a growing movement to regulate the internet.