Ontario school boards, government advance conflicting plans on social media limits [Video]

The Ford government and a group of Ontario school boards are slowly moving forward with contrasting strategies to battle distractions in the classroom caused by social media apps like TikTok and Instagram.

A government-led plan to meet with the executives of major social media companies to discuss how to combat distractions has stalled with the rapid shuffle of three education ministers, while school boards gear up to take the same companies to court for billions of dollars.

In May, then-education minister Stephen Lecce told reporters he wanted to sit down with the leaders of companies like Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram to talk about how to cut out classroom distractions.

The announcement came as the government faced pressure to back a school-boards-led lawsuit seeking billions from the companies for classroom distractions and the effect their apps had allegedly had on children’s attention spans.

Instead of backing the suit, Lecce said it was key to …