'Teachers Are Going to Hate It': How Social Media Apps Hooked Teens at School
Snapchat sent phone alerts to adolescents during school hours, urging them to share what was going on in their classrooms.
Meta paid “teen ambassadors” to promote Instagram and hand out swag to their friends at school.
TikTok gave the National PTA millions of dollars, in part to throw school events about online safety and provide favorable comments to journalists.
Again and again, the world’s leading social media companies have targeted students, even as complaints have mounted that they are hurting teenagers’ mental health and academic performance, according to a New York Times review of internal documents that lay bare for the first time these tactics to hook young users.
The documents emerged from lawsuits filed by more than 1,400 school districts against Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube amid a rising backlash against social media, with parent movements and best-selling books blaming the platforms for loneliness, bullying, eating disorders and sexual exploitation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/04/us/social-media-schools.html?
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I have no words.......
On edit: shortened for copyright
= new reply since forum marked as read
I was teaching a college psych course and saw students constantly on their phones, so I decded to play this for them. I did, and only saw a couple of them on their phones through the rest of the semester.
Show the kids (and parents!) how they are being manipulated.
See comment #3.
Was meant for you, maybe make it an OP?
Priorities, amiright? 
With AC. I hope more people watch it.
Thanks for posting.
Feel free to make it an op if you want.
