Four Canadian school boards are suing social media giants Meta Platforms, Snap, and ByteDance for CA$4.55 billion in damages, claiming that their social media products were negligently designed for compulsive use resulting in rewiring the way children think, behave, and learn, causing massive strains on their resources.

The four separate but similar cases were filed against the owners of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok in Ontario Superior Court in Canada’s largest province by school boards in and around Toronto and Ottawa, the country’s capital.