It’s the first Colorado school district to go after social media companies in the courtroom, but it might not be the last.

The Aspen School District has filed a lawsuit against YouTube, Snap (Snapchat’s parent company), ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company) and Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which are front and center in the lawsuit).

The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, alleges those companies maximized user engagement at the detriment of young users to the extent of addiction.

“They’ve been very, very, successful,” attorney Marc Bern of Marc J. Bern and Partners LLC told CBS News Colorado. “We have an epidemic no different than opioids.”

Bern is also serving as attorney of record for the Aspen School District.

David Baugh, superintendent of the school district, did not go so far as a direct comparison to opioids but agreed completely with the addictive nature of social media, and the dangerous effects it’s having on kids.

“We’ve been reactive against alcohol and tobacco and vaping and now we are reacting to this,” Baugh said. “But I’ve never seen this level of mental health issues that attribute back to the social media problem … The level of disconnect, the level of disrespect, the level of lack of productivity.”

Aside from a major distraction, Aspen High School Principal Sarah Strassburger argues the mental health of kids is the most important effect coming from social media that needs to be addressed. She said apps like Snapchat are able to show kids in real-time when they’re being excluded, and add tons of opportunities for people to be cruel to each other and not see the consequences.

“In those high school years, we are seeing an increase in those levels of anxiety and depression and loneliness, and it is really hard to combat because it’s so prevalent, everybody has a phone,” Strassburger said. “My big sadness is the relationships.”

Strassburger argues there’s a lack of a real connection when a smartphone gets between two people. She knows we live with social media now, and there’s no putting it back in the metaphorical box. She said learning how to responsibly live with it is the next step.

“We don’t really stop to consider the applications and as a society, we are like ‘more, new, shiny.’ I think we need to pause,” Strassburger said.

Baugh said while it’s still very much only a possibility, they are considering an outright smartphone ban in order to try and bring kids back to reality. He said he understands the need for parent and kid communication and would likely allow flip phones if they absolutely must have a way of communicating, but said smartphones being taken each class by a teacher isn’t getting the results they hoped it would.

“I think the research is clear, even when you can’t see your phone, you already are attuned to it ringing and buzzing,” Strassburger said, referencing ‘phone pockets’ teachers use to stash student’s phones for a class. “You might be missing a key notification, so they are distracted.”

Aspen might be the first, but Bern alluded that they’re likely going to be representing a school district in Garfield County for the same reason soon, and they’re already representing around 40 other school districts the country over.

CBS Colorado reached out to Meta for comment and received this statement from Antigone Davis, head of safety at Meta, who referenced it as a response to a lawsuit in Maryland, but under similar grounds:

“We want to reassure every parent that we have their interests at heart in the work we’re doing to provide teens with safe, supportive experiences online. We’ve developed more than 30 tools to support teens and their families, including tools that allow parents to decide when, and for how long, their teens use Instagram, age verification technology, automatically setting accounts belonging to those under 16 to private when they join Instagram, and sending notifications encouraging teens to take regular breaks. We’ve invested in technology that finds and removes content related to suicide, self-injury or eating disorders before anyone reports it to us. These are complex issues, but we will continue working with parents, experts and regulators such as the state attorneys general to develop new tools, features and policies that meet the needs of teens and their families.”

Spencer Wilson

This story originally appeared on CBS News.  Click here for the original article.