Woah! Stop your scrolling (if you can) and get a load of this wild jury verdict that just came through in Los Angeles. Social media is actually on the hook for its addictive powers. A jury just ordered Meta and Google to pay a combined $3 million to a 20-old-woman who alleges that Instagram and YouTube addicted her to social media as a child and harmed her mental health. And it sounds like the jury agrees. In this social media addiction trial, the jury found Instagram and Meta were 70% responsible, and Google and YouTube 30%. But this is truly a wild proceeding, because this 20-year-old is surely not the only person alive who feels they’ve become addicted to social media over the last few decades. Do Facebook and Instagram owe us ALL $3 million? Conversely, is it really fair to say that these companies are responsible for social media addiction? It’s a complicated tangle to be sure.
Kaley G.M., the case’s plaintiff, shared that she created YouTube and Instagram accounts when she was 8 and 9, and soon found herself spending all her time on them. “I was on it every single day,” she shared. “First thing when I woke up, right after school, and then late at night.” She notes that she stopped participating in her other hobbies and that the apps led her to anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia. Again, there are many nuanced questions at play here, but whatever the jury heard in the testimony, they agreed with Kaley’s version of events.
Details from this social media addiction trial are still emerging. But there are many lawsuits like it, nationwide. And the message behind them is that Meta, Google, and other social media companies are making products that are purposefully addictive and have adverse effects on their users. But this case is the first to reach trial, and so it will set a precedent for those to come. And in a wild turn of events, it seems the court is siding with consumers, against social media networks. Among other things, lawyers argued that the companies’ design choices are deliberately meant to keep users on the apps indefinitely.
Currently, there is no formal definition of a social media addiction. But there was once no formal definition of a Gambling Disorder either, and that is now codified in the DSM-5-TR. Social media is still a relatively new fixture in our world, and its psychological effects remain poorly understood. Perhaps a landmark case such as this one will bolster the efforts to operationalize such an addiction. It’s true that an individual has a choice about whether to engage with social media, create an account, etc. But the idea of addiction is that one loses the ability to choose to stop an action that they take freely. If social media is creating the same brain circuits we see in other addictions, then that’s incredibly important to know.
What can be understood, though, in the words of The LA Times, is that this case “made public tens of thousands of pages of internal documents — documents Lanier argued showed the companies intentionally targeted children, and engineered their products to keep them on the platforms longer.” And that is probably a firmer condemnation than anything else.
TikTok and Snap were also named as defendants in this social media addiction case, but settled before the trial. Recently, Meta was also found liable for $375 million by a New Mexico jury, in a case that claimed that “Instagram [had turned] into a ‘breeding ground’ for child predators.” It looks like a reckoning lurks on the horizon for big social media platforms.