Social media companies are being sued for harming their users’ mental health – but are the platforms addictive? | Social media

The upcoming legal proceedings against Meta and YouTube are often referred to as “social media addiction lawsuits,” but whether these platforms are truly addictive is still a matter of scholarly debate.

The lawsuits were filed against Meta, YouTube (Google), Snap Inc and TikTok by plaintiffs alleging that these platforms seriously damaged their mental health when they were children. Snap and TikTok have settled the first case to go to trial, brought by a woman known as KGM, now in her 20s. The other defendants, Meta and YouTube, were scheduled to appear in court this week, but the trial was delayed because Meta’s lead attorney fell ill.

Notably, the plaintiffs’ cases do not rely exclusively on the idea that they became addicted to the platforms. They allege that addiction is a precursor to other serious harms, including depression, eating disorders, self-harm in the form of cutting, attempted suicide, and, in at least one case, death by suicide.

The companies have strongly pushed back against these claims. “Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been at the heart of our work… The allegations in these complaints are simply false,” a Google spokesperson said.

“We strongly disagree with these allegations and are confident that the evidence will demonstrate our long-standing commitment to supporting young people,” a Meta spokesperson said.

TikTok and Snap Inc did not respond to a request for comment.

Experts say it would be difficult to scientifically prove that social media is addictive, especially as the research community on the issue moves away from the term “addiction” and toward terms like “problem use” or “use disorders.”

Ofir Turel, a professor of information systems management at the University of Melbourne, and Dr Jessica Schleider, a clinical psychologist at Northwestern University, both acknowledged that social media can be harmful, but resisted calling it “addictive.”

Turel said the term has become too common. “Everyone says, ‘I’m addicted,’ as if that’s not a medical term. And that’s where things get murky,” he said.

“This is an incredibly complex and burning question among scientists,” Schleider said.

The lawsuits against the platforms allege that they borrow “largely from the behavioral and neurobiological techniques used by slot machines and exploited by the cigarette industry.”

While Schleider acknowledged that the platforms’ core features, such as social comparison metrics, endless scrolling and algorithmic amplification of polarizing topics, are all “designed to keep people there. They’re not neutral. They shape attention, emotions and behavior,” she said that doesn’t necessarily make them addictive.

“There is currently a preponderance of evidence on the association between social media use and mental health outcomes, including addiction,” Schleider said, but added that results are mixed and the average negative impact of social media is small in large, well-conducted studies. The relationship between social media and mental health is complex and perhaps “bidirectional”, meaning that poor mental health may lead to social media use in addition to social media use leading to poor mental health. It is therefore important not to simply conclude that social media is “the sole driver of the youth mental health crisis”.

While Schleider pointed out that large-scale research finds that social media has only a small negative impact on mental health at the population level, Schleider also said that individual harms could be more severe and that plaintiffs could prove that the platforms harmed them.

Meta allegedly attempted to bury research conducted in collaboration with Nielsen that found that temporarily pausing Facebook improved participants’ feelings of depression, loneliness and anxiety.

A Meta spokesperson said the research was stopped because the improvement in participants’ symptoms was due to the placebo effect.

The American Psychological Association also ridiculed Zuckerberg for cherry-picking one of Meta’s reports to claim there was no link between social media and negative mental health outcomes, when the report actually mentioned multiple risks.

Turel has conducted brain imaging research showing that excessive social media use is associated with brain differences similar to those of excessive gaming. Gaming disorder is the only behavioral disorder – as opposed to substance use disorder – in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) chapter on addiction. Social media companies are known for exploiting the same “intermittent reinforcement” mechanism that makes gaming so appealing.

There are “different types of addiction,” Turel said, and the distinctions are important. Addiction affects both the “reward system,” primarily governed by dopamine release, and the “self-control system,” primarily governed by the prefrontal cortex, according to Turel. He compared the “reward system” to the accelerator of a car, and the “self-control system” to the brakes. When addicted, people jump on the gas without thinking, and their ability to brake may also be impaired.

In some substance use disorders, like cocaine use disorder, long-term use can permanently damage both parts of the brain, Turel said. But to our knowledge, behavioral disorders simply do not cause this type of irreversible damage. Although they may temporarily affect the “accelerator” in the brain, they do not affect the “brakes,” and this change is reversible over time.

Turel also said that drug addiction withdrawal symptoms are much more intense. “Let’s say you don’t have access to social media. What symptoms are you going to experience? You’re going to be agitated for a while, and that’s it,” says Turel. While withdrawal from the substance can cause nausea, excessive vomiting, severe migraines, and chills.

Simply being unable to stop a behavior is not enough for the DSM to define it as an addiction. People should not be able to stop despite negative consequences. This too is very different between social media and established addictions. The risks of imprisonment, psychosis or overdose are severe compared to the typical risks of compulsive social media users, such as less engagement in their hobbies and friends.

While the plaintiffs’ cases link social media “addiction” to other extreme harms, including suicidal tendencies, causation is more difficult to establish than, for example, the link between meth overuse and psychosis, or opioid use and depressed breathing leading to overdose.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends the term “problem use” when it comes to social media for these reasons, and also because social media offers benefits such as information sharing and connection, as well as disadvantages.

Despite hesitation to use the label addiction, many academies and scientific organizations still recognize that social media can be harmful, especially to minors, whose brains are still developing. Many of them are calling for increased regulation and consequences for platforms.

When smokers and their loved ones began suing tobacco companies, there was not yet a scientific consensus on the harms of tobacco, although these companies also attempted to influence the evidence in their favor.

Turel sees this as a similar moment. We now know that cigarettes cause not only addiction, but also many types of cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

“Social media is much more than an addictive machine. It has many other problems, with fake news, cyberbullying and body image. And we are realizing these and trying to control them.”