The school district where a 14-year-old student died by suicide after a video of her bullying was spread online is facing fresh scrutiny for filing a lawsuit against social media companies and blaming them for fueling the Teen Mental Health crisis but parents and students within the Central Regional School District in Ocean County say District leaders are ducking their responsibility and not following through on the changes they promised senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan reports social media is terrible it absolutely is horrible Jill Heff's daughter attends Central Regional High School where 14-year-old Adriana Kuch died by Suicide almost a year ago after classmates here assaulted her then posted a video of that attack on social media the district just announced it's suing several platforms including meta formerly known as Facebook Instagram YouTube and Tik Tok to change how these companies operate and hopefully compel them to take responsibility and make changes said board president Susan Cowdrick Heff's unimpressed I personally feel they're doing it just to c ya because of what happened with Adriana I I truly think they're just trying to cover their own butts because oh well you know well because she was bullied online have still deeply concerned her daughter Emma was Adriana's friend and says little has changed at school there's about nine new videos from this year of school fights being posted on Instagram cuz nobody stopping them kids are recording it in the hallways kids are recording arguments with teachers and posting them everywhere it's bad it's the same as last year all over again studies suggest a virtual epidemic a student shot this fight video at Central Regional High School in 2021 and posted it on Instagram a platform run by meta which maintains IG and Facebook are safe because meta enforces its Community standards but an unredacted lawsuit filed by jerseys Attorney General revealed meta's internal surveys of 13 to 15 year olds on IG show 27% reported witnessing bullying within the last 7 days almost 11% said they'd been personally targeted despite the public claims that the platforms were safe we found that the company knew that their actions were harmful to Children the company consistently downplays what they actually know about how teens are exposed to harmful content such as suicide and self harm content hate speech and bullying in solicitation New Jersey joined 41 other states in a class action suit demanding accountability meanwhile New Jersey's anti-bullying task force last week released a disturbing report recording the highest levels of harassment intimidation and bullying reported since the state began collecting information almost 7,700 incidents of bullying were confirmed more than 19,000 incidents reported Statewide the social media companies are completely and always have been completely irresponsible and paying no attention and in fact making enormous profits off the suffering of Kids Stuart green helped write the task force report but wishes it had taken a tougher stand on how school districts handle bullying he claims it's underreported the task force report itself although it has multiple good elements in it uh create uh does nothing to create those meaningful con consquences for administrators who don't address the issue green encourages districts to fight cyber bullying by making students stow away their phones and special locking pouches during school the central regional district distributed phone pockets for students but enforcements hardly uniform Emma says she's upset so I knew Adriana personally and because of everything going on it's frustrating to me because there were supposed to be changes this year and there's not I don't like it we reached out but Central Regional District officials were unavailable for comment I'm Brenda Flanagan NJ Spotlight news