The parents of a 13-year-old girl filed a lawsuit against Google, saying the tech giant is liable for causing their daughter to experience a psychological crisis that almost resulted in suicide and pinning at least part of the blame on her use of a school-issued Chromebook.
The lawsuit comes as a growing number of schools are dialing back their use of technology in response to concerns that its overuse at school is contributing to mental health problems of children and teenagers. Chromebooks are the most popular laptops used in schools in the United States.
“As far as we know, it’s the first case targeting Google’s Chromebooks, which run on software that Google controls and can update when it wants to,” said Andrew Liddell, a lawyer for the EdTech Law Center, which filed the suit along with Qureshi Law in Santa Clara County Superior Court in California on Nov. 4.
Google officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Google faced criticism shortly before the lawsuit was filed after it announced that schools would have to opt out of using Google Search if they did not want students using its AI tools. The lawsuit claims the 13-year-old girl was using a school-issued Chromebook to access Google’s Gemini chatbot, which generated responses that made her think she had a host of psychological disorders.
The lawsuit and other criticisms of Google could fuel current efforts to put the brakes on ed-tech use in schools, said Katie Davis, a professor in the College of Education at the University of Washington and the co-director of the Center for Digital Youth, who is an expert in the role of AI in education.
The lawsuit and other criticisms of big technology companies provide a “great opportunity for schools to take stock of all of their educational technologies, both hardware and software, and how they are being used in schools and if they really are aligned with student learning goals in a really coherent way,” she said.
According to the lawsuit, the girl began engaging with the Google chatbot after an “ordinary search.” Then, in December, she started to heavily engage with Google’s Gemini-powered AI Mode for Search, around the time the company released its AI model Gemini 3 Flash. In the next few months, she became convinced, through her chats with the AI chatbot, that she had psychological disorders.
Technology certainly has a place in education. But I also think that schools, educators, and parents should be asking the question: Is this enhancing my students' learning or not?
All of this was discovered by adults when the school’s third-party monitoring software notified a former counselor at the school (who had left the school but was still receiving alerts). The counselor then notified the girl’s parents, and they intervened.
“It’s horrifying,” said Liddell, “how this could happen to your daughter, without even knowing that she ever had access to a chatbot at school, much less that she was in such emotional distress.”
What educators can take away from the lawsuit
Earlier this year, Google Classroom opened its use of the Gemini chatbot to K-12 students of all ages. This happened with little notice to schools, which often go through a vetting process before adopting certain technologies.
Google and other tech companies are pushing for greater AI use among customers and embedding the technology into devices and applications, said Merve Lapus, vice president of education outreach and engagement for Common Sense Media, which advocates for responsible tech use in schools.
The tech companies are moving their AI software into "[school-used] apps and tools—oftentimes after districts have already created [policies] around the way that they choose to interact with certain [AI],” said Lapus.
As a consequence, schools are faced with the challenge of protecting students from accessing harmful content or having their personal data compromised and providing them with access to modern technology tools to help them learn and prepare to succeed in future careers, experts told Education Week.
“As much as we want to protect our kids, we still need to also prepare [them] to navigate this world,” Lapus said, “or we remove something as fundamental to the learning experience as Search.”
What does this mean for the future of Chromebooks?
What the growing pushback means for the future of school-issued Chromebooks is hard to tell.
The devices are the most popular laptops used in schools and they give kids access to content on the Internet and assignments that they do through their school districts’ learning management systems. (Many districts use Google Classroom for these purposes.)
Even so, some schools are dialing back their use of laptops like Chromebooks.
Inge Esping, the principal of McPherson Middle School in McPherson, Kan., said her school no longer just gives every student a Chromebook—they are cart-based now. So, students can use them if the planned lesson requires them or they must check them out to complete assignments at home. The school made the change last winter break and has seen improvements in student behavior and engagement.
“We had really lost some of the art of person-to-person connection, and I would say in my building in particular, that was one of our strongest reasons for pulling back from 1-to-1 Chromebooks,” Esping said.
“Technology certainly has a place in education,” Esping added. “But I also think that schools, educators, and parents should be asking the question: Is this enhancing my students’ learning or not?”
