The Courts Say Facebook and YouTube Are Addictive—What Does That Mean for Your Teen?

Social media companies may be on the verge of a reckoning for their impacts on children.

Meta (which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) lost two landmark court cases last week about the way their apps affect mental health for kids and teens.

• A court in New Mexico found that Meta violated state consumer protection laws with algorithms that push content that harms children’s safety.
• A California court found Meta and YouTube intentionally designed their platforms to be addictive, leading to mental health problems for young users. It also called out that company executives knew of the harms and did not disclose them.

These are the first cases to hold social media companies liable for how they negatively impact people, especially children, but more could be coming.

What Do We Know About Social Media and Mental Health?

A growing body of research in recent years has found connections between social media use and worse mental health outcomes for kids and teens.

Here’s what you should know:

• Studies have found that adolescent social media use can be associated with mental health issues like anxiety and depression.
• Teens spending more time on social media each day can have a higher risk of mental health issues.

It’s important to keep in mind that, while this evidence is troubling, we still need more research.

“To best design strategies for prevention and regulation, we need more research to clarify important details such as whether particular content, particular applications, or accumulated time spent on screens are the biggest drivers,” says Dean Daniele Fallin, PhD. “I am so glad these issues are being raised, and we have much more work to do!”

And there can be benefits to social media use, too. Many teens, especially LGBTQ+ youth, use social media to connect with friends and find community, which can actually help mental health.

What Are We Doing About It?

This is far from the first time that social media and mental health have been in the spotlight—parents, mental health practitioners, and governments have been sounding the alarm for years.

• In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General released a report on social media and youth mental health, calling it not “sufficiently safe” for young people.
• The next year, he called for warning labels on social media platforms, similar to what you would find on a pack of cigarettes.
• California, New York, and Minnesota have all passed laws requiring mental health warning labels on social media platforms for users in their state.

Concerns about social media, and phone use in general, have also sparked action in schools across the country. At the beginning of this school year, over half of U.S. states had implemented some level of school cell phone ban. More, including Georgia, are looking to adopt or expand these policies.

Julie Gazmararian, PhD, who works with Georgia school districts to understand the impacts of these policies, says that there are noticeable differences in students at phone-free schools.

“With cell phones out of the classroom, students are more engaged, more focused academically, and more engaged with their peers,” she says. “Teachers and administrators are noticing big differences in behavior.”

What Could Be the Impacts of These New Cases?

Some people are comparing this to cases brought against Big Tobacco which lead to huge regulatory and public opinion shifts on smoking.

While social media giants could be facing a similar moment as more court cases mount, the issue is a bit more nuanced. We will have to wait and see what guardrails may be put in place as a result of these cases.