Social Media’s Big Tobacco Moment

It’s official: brain rot from doomscrolling has replaced tooth decay from candy as the top concern for parents. Worried adults are holding social media companies’ feet to the fire as US teens’ scrolling time exceeds five hours a day, on average, and evidence mounts that apps are behind the deterioration of youth mental health.

One recent study found that 18- to 24-year-olds who reduced their social media usage to an average of half an hour a day experienced lower rates of depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Many teens don’t need adults to tell them they have a problem: In 2024, 48% of teens ages 13 to 17 said social media has a negative effect on them, up from 32% in 2022, per Pew Research Center. Even many tech CEOs say they restrict their kids’ social media usage.

But...some researchers say there’s still not enough evidence to conclude that social media causes mental health issues, noting that young people who already have poor mental wellbeing could be more prone to scrolling excessively.

Big Tech faces the music

The purveyors of the platforms known to cause the teen glass-eyed stare were dealt some courtroom defeats recently:

• A California jury ordered Meta and Alphabet to pay $6 million in damages to a woman who suffered depression and anxiety while using their platforms as a teen. The jury found that the platforms were intentionally designed to hook young users.
• New Mexico recently won a case against Meta, which was fined $375 million for misleading users about the risks of its platform for children and failing to protect kids from child predators on its platforms.

Legal experts say the verdicts create precedents that could lead to a cascade of lawsuits that would bite into Big Tech’s profits.

No phone, no problem

On top of their legal troubles, social media companies are now seeing their products yanked out of young users’ hands in the US. Phones are now banned in schools in 27 states, as well as in several major districts, including New York City.

Meanwhile, some countries have decided they want kids to touch grass 24/7. Australia became the first country to ban social media usage for kids under 16 last year, with Austria and Denmark preparing similar measures. Dozens of other countries are considering their own bans.

Big picture: Losing their young audience would be as painful for tech companies as the feeling of an iPad kid finding himself locked out of his device. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, and X made $11 billion selling ads that targeted kids and teens in 2022, according to an estimate by Harvard School of Public Health researchers.—SK