Facebook, YouTube, and other social media giants are intentionally hooking vulnerable children on their platforms and flooding them with harmful and exploitive content, according to a new lawsuit by Seattle public-school leaders that accuses the tech companies of creating a youth mental-health crisis in the state of Washington and elsewhere.

The 92-page lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court alleges that Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat "have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse of Defendants' social media platforms."

The tech giants have built features to maximize users' time on their sites, and they use complex algorithms, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to "exploit the neurophysiology of the brain's reward systems to keep users coming back, coming back frequently, and staying on the respective platforms for as long as possible."

The lawsuit alleges that school districts in Seattle and across the country "are uniquely harmed by the current youth mental health crisis," because "schools are one of the main providers for mental health services for school-aged children." School districts have had to hire additional mental-health staff, develop new mental-health resources, train teachers to help students with their mental health, increase disciplinary services, and repair property damaged by students struggling with their mental health, the lawsuit states.

The novel suit also seeks to get around an expected defense of falling back on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet platforms from being held liable for content posted by users. The plaintiffs say they are not attempting to hold the companies liable for what third parties have said on their platforms, but instead for how they operate the platforms. Section 230, the lawsuit states, "is no shield for Defendants' own acts in designing, marketing, and operating social media platforms that are harmful to youth."

The lawsuit cites academic studies that have linked social-media use to increased adolescent depression, anxiety, suicide attempts, eating disorders, cyberbullying, and sleep deprivation. "Defendants exacerbate the disruption of sleep by sending push notifications and emails either at night when children should be sleeping or during school hours when they should be studying, thereby prompting children to re-engage with Defendants' platforms at times when using them is harmful to their health and well-being," the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit claims that while Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, does not technically allow pre-teens to create accounts, it "knowingly lacks effective age-verification protocols." Snapchat, according to the lawsuit, targets a younger audience and has been intentionally designed "in a manner that older individuals find hard to use."

YouTube has pitched itself to advertisers as "the favorite website for kids 2-12," and "[t]he new Saturday Morning Cartoons," the lawsuit states.

"YouTube has not implemented even rudimentary protocols to verify the age of users. Anyone can watch a video on YouTube without registering an account or reporting their age," the lawsuit states, adding later that, "YouTube's algorithms push its young users down rabbit holes where they are likely to encounter content that is violent, sexual, or encourages self-harm, among other types of harmful content."

From 2009 to 2019, Seattle Public Schools saw on average a 30 percent increase in the number of students who reported feeling "so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row that [they] stopped doing some usual activities," the lawsuit states. "The pandemic and corresponding increase in time youth spend on Defendants' platforms have intensified the crisis." In his State of the Union speech in March, President Joe Biden called for holding social media companies accountable "for the national experiment they're conducting on our children for profit."

Meta and TikTok did not respond to a request for comment from National Review on Monday. Google, the owner of YouTube, and Snap, the owner of Snapchat, told the Associated Press that they have worked to protect young people who use their platforms.

Snap launched an in-app support system to help users experiencing a mental-health or emotional crisis find expert resources, and has setting that allow parents to see who their children contact through Snapchat, the AP reported. It does not allow parents to see content of their children's messages. "We will continue to make sure our platform is safe and to give Snapchatters dealing with mental health issues resources to help them deal with the challenges facing young people today," the company said in a statement.

A Google spokesman told the AP that the company has "invested heavily in creating safe experiences for children across our platforms and have introduced strong protections and dedicated features to prioritize their well being."

The lawsuit is calling for the social-media giants' conduct to be considered a "public nuisance under Washington law," for an order requiring them to abate the public nuisance, for them to be jointly and severally liable, actual and compensatory damages, and "equitable relief to fund prevention education and treatment for excessive and problematic use of social media."