“Social Media Addiction” Is Way More Complicated Than You Think
Big Tech faces a tsunami of litigation, but it’s time for cooler heads to prevail.
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The era of social media addiction litigation is upon us.
In a case heard this March, a Los Angeles jury decided against Meta (the parent company of Instagram) and Google (the parent company of YouTube), finding them liable for negligence and defective design. The plaintiff was 20-year-old Kaley G. M., who claimed that her decade-long addiction to social media caused her to suffer anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and body dysmorphia. In her complaint, Kaley said she developed a “dangerous dependency” on the platforms.
Kaley’s lawyer opened the trial by telling jurors that the case is as “easy as ABC”—“addicting the brains of children.” He accused the defendants of creating “addiction machines” designed to keep solitary teens hooked through features such as infinite scroll and other rapidly rewarding methods.
For the defense, the Meta team argued the plaintiff’s psychological distress predated her use of Instagram and rejected claims that their apps were “clinically” addictive by design.
Kaley won $3 million in compensatory damages, and $3 million in punitive damages. Meta is appealing.
The same basic arguments used in Kaley’s lawsuit are driving lawsuits against Meta, Google, Snapchat, and ByteDance (owner of TikTok), filed by over 2,500 individuals, states, and schools. One study suggests that the compensation sought by more than 1,200 school districts totals nearly $500 billion.
Meanwhile, the California court system has coordinated a large group of plaintiffs—representing more than 1,000 cases from across the nation—suing social media companies under a collective known as Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding. The earliest cases will soon come before a California judge.
School districts and states will argue that they have had to bear the costs of treating a generation of adolescents suffering from the effects of addictive social media use. But there’s a problem: there are real questions about whether social media addiction actually “exists” in a legal sense, and if it does, whether it is the cause of psychological problems or the consequence of them.
Let us say first that we feel particularly well-suited to offer a view on this issue. One of us is a clinician who has treated people with drug addiction for many years. The other is a lawyer and psychologist who has treated addicts and has been studying addictions for decades.
To us, the answers to the question of whether social media addiction is real are not simple. They differ greatly depending on whether social media addiction is being treated in a clinical setting or adjudicated in a courtroom.
Consider this: Many teens suffer the same problems as Kaley even in the absence of social media use. Some go to therapists. If social media is among their problems, they will tell the therapist that they are worried about spending too much time on social media and feel unable to stop.
Although social media addiction is not a disorder recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, the clinician might well diagnose the young patient with social media addiction, along with anxiety, depression and other problems. And with good reason: the pattern of excessive social media consumption resembles the standard criteria for addiction to drugs, namely, persistent use, often accompanied by craving, difficulty stopping, and adverse consequences of use.
There are therapeutic similarities, too. Clinicians routinely employ cognitive behavioral therapy to help patients recognize the cues that trigger the desire to use—whether they’re using heroin or TikTok.
Should depression or anxiety accompany problems of compulsive use, medications and other therapies are offered. Training in time management, impulse control, and goal setting cuts across treatments for persistent unhealthy habits. (Notably, Kaley did see at least two therapists. One testified in court that social media use rarely came up in their therapy. The other said it was one of several problems she discussed.)
But what happens when teens or their proxies, like school districts, walk into a courtroom instead of a clinic?
The courtroom is a domain where the claim of being “addicted” should be held to a different, more stringent standard. Addiction is not a disease in the usual sense; its criteria are all behavioral rather than physical. The course of addiction can be altered by completely changing one’s habits of mind and behavior; this is not true of conventional disease.
This is not to deny that habitual or addictive behavior has a biological basis. All behavior has a biological basis. The neurotransmitter dopamine appears to play a role, but its importance has been wildly exaggerated by professionals, including a Stanford psychiatrist who served as an expert witness in Kaley’s case and has called smartphones “the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24-7 for a wired generation.” The so-called “dopamine theory of addiction” has been harshly criticized as too simplistic.
Most relevant to legal action, however, is that we cannot distinguish between an urge to scroll that wasn’t resisted and one that could not be resisted. Vexing questions abound. Is there a clear way to disentangle the role played by social media “addiction” from the influence of preexisting psychological problems, especially since such problems are ubiquitous among teens? Is it possible that teens’ distress caused them to turn to intensive social media use in the first place, rather than the other way around?
We cannot know. Nothing—no brain scan, blood test, or psychological measure—can validate anyone’s capacity to control an urge, or identify the specific cause of psychological harms.
Making such determinations is not essential for treatment, where the goal is to help people no matter the cause of their distress. But they are vital for adjudicating liability for defendants accused of addicting people, because this could be the basis of lawsuits that can cost companies millions of dollars and extensively expand civil liability.
They might also infringe on free speech rights. There is a danger of chilling constitutionally protected, legitimate advertising and other standard practices in the media and other industries. Enterprises that provide goods and services that countless consumers desire will potentially be forced out of business—or compelled to raise prices to unsustainable levels.
This is why the standard in a courtroom should be more stringent than the standard that satisfies therapists. The law should not promiscuously expand civil liability, opening the floodgates not just for social media companies but for other industries such as gambling or fast food which meet the loose addiction criteria.
Social media addiction—invoking notions of uncontrollability usually associated with physical disease—is a sound concept in the clinic. But where the law is concerned, it goes too far based on too little knowledge.
Sally Satel, MD is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, medical director of a methadone clinic in Washington, D.C., and a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine.
Stephen J. Morse is a professor of law and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an expert in neuroscience in the courtroom.
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