Social media drama has a price tag now.
A Kentucky school district recently settled a lawsuit against social media companies for approximately $27 million, arguing that the platforms helped create a student mental health burden schools have been forced to absorb.
But school counselors didn’t need a lawsuit to know this was costing something.
The screenshots.
The group chats.
The parent emails.
The cyberbullying investigations.
The friendship blowups that started online and landed in your office before first period.
In this episode, we’re looking at what these lawsuits are actually arguing, why the research on social media and student mental health is more complicated than the headlines suggest, and what happens when someone finally starts counting the work school counselors have been absorbing for years.
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All names, stories, and case studies in this episode are fictionalized composites drawn from real-world circumstances. Any resemblance to actual students, families, or school personnel is coincidental. Details have been altered to protect privacy.
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Ready to spend a few days this summer with me, geeking out over school counseling and preparing for your best year ever? Grab your ticket here before this limited-seat event sells out!
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This work is part of the School for School Counselors body of work developed by Steph Johnson, LPC, CSC, which centers role authority over role drift, consultative practice over fix-it culture, adult-designed systems and environments as primary drivers of student behavior, clinical judgment over compliance, and school counselor identity as leadership within complex systems.
