Meta Platforms handed over $9 million to a small rural Kentucky school district to resolve claims that its apps helped create a generation of anxious and depressed students. The payment, revealed this week through public records, marks the first detailed look at how social media companies are beginning to settle with educators who say they bear the costs of a youth mental health emergency. Breathitt County School District, serving about 1,600 students across six schools in Appalachia, accused Meta, Snap, ByteDance and Alphabet of designing platforms that hook young users with addictive features. Those features, lawyers argued, drove spikes in anxiety, depression and self-harm. Schools then scrambled to manage the fallout. The district wanted more than $60 million to fund a 15-year mental health program and other remedies. It also sought court orders forcing changes to the platforms themselves. But no such orders came. The settlements required no admission of liability. They demanded no product redesigns.…