EAST LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – East Lansing Public Schools could be joining a number of school districts in California in a lawsuit aimed at social media giants, like Facebook and Snapchat.

A California law firm is leading the charge against several social media platforms. The lawsuit claims the companies marketed to minors while knowing that its content could negatively impact their mental health.

While the decision to join the suit was tabled until a meeting with other Ingham County superintendents, there seemed to be some support from the board.

“We want our kids to feel safe, we want to feel confident and you can’t really feel safe if you are not mentally safe,” said Chris Martin.

Martin is on the East Lansing Public Schools Board of Education and has two children in the district. As a parent, he said he understands the concerns other parents have about social media and their mental health.

“So I think if kids feel like they are being bullied through social media, feel like they are being caused to have a negative body image or negative self-image, that’s not okay,” he said.

The lawsuit led by the Frantz Legal Group is suing Meta, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube for monetary damages

They are accused of targeting minors “to maximize profits despite knowing the severe detrimental effects excessive social media use causes to minors.”

A similar suit filed in a federal court accuses those companies of exposing kids and teens to things like eating disorders encouraging self-harm and even instigating vandalism.

In a statement, a Snap spokesperson said their app does not work the same as other platforms that open up to a newsfeed, and that content is vetted before being shared with a larger audience.

“Snapchat was designed differently from other social media platforms because nothing is more important to us than the well-being of our community. Our app opens directly to a camera rather than a feed of content that encourages passive scrolling and is primarily used to help real friends communicate. We aren’t an app that encourages perfection or popularity, and we vet all content before it can reach a large audience, which helps protect against the promotion and discovery of potentially harmful material. While we will always have more work to do, we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping friends feel connected, informed, happy, and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence.”

Snap spokesperson

Ultimately, the East Lansing Board of Education decided to come back to the lawsuit until they hear from other superintendents in Ingham County.

6 News did reach out to both Meta and Google and have yet to hear back.

Congress is also looking closely at how children interact online, in the last month bills have been proposed to protect online privacy and ban kids under the age of 13 from using social media.