Dr David Bratt

So­cial me­dia is ad­dic­tive. Yes, it’s ad­dic­tive man, un­cle, pops, aun­tie, Mamoo, it’s ad­dic­tive. It’s ad­dic­tive if you de­fine ad­dic­tion as get­ting such a dopamine rush that you feel com­pelled to reach for the cell­phone as soon as you open your eyes in the morn­ing or use your cell­phone for hours at a time. It’s ad­dic­tive for man, woman and child and the ad­dic­tion of the par­ents is a ma­jor part of the prob­lem. How can you ac­knowl­edge that there is some­thing wrong with what your child is do­ing if you are do­ing the ex­act same thing?

So, ac­knowl­edge it and live with it or do some­thing about your ad­dic­tion and your child, be­cause it harms your child.

How sim­i­lar is this to a nico­tine ad­dic­tion? As was a cen­tral ques­tion 30 years ago when Big To­bac­co was be­ing sued, is Big Tech in­ten­tion­al­ly de­sign­ing its prod­uct to hook young peo­ple?

The an­swer is yes. The ad­dic­tions are sim­i­lar, and Big Tech is just as cul­pa­ble as Big To­bac­co.

Up to now, tech com­pa­ny ex­ec­u­tives have been able to pro­tect them­selves us­ing the stale but ef­fec­tive de­fence used in the past: it’s not their fault if peo­ple use their prod­uct and get harmed. Un­less you are de­sign­ing it to be ad­dic­tive and you know it. And this is what has just been shown.

All over the world, gov­ern­ments are be­gin­ning to take mea­sures to as­sist par­ents and chil­dren in lim­it­ing the time they spend on so­cial me­dia.

Aus­tralia was the first to do this and chil­dren un­der 16 are not al­lowed to reg­is­ter on so­cial me­dia plat­forms. Oth­er coun­tries have plans in place. The UK is con­sid­er­ing an Aus­tralia-style ban for chil­dren un­der 16 and last week an­nounced plans to ad­vise par­ents to lim­it screen time for chil­dren un­der five to no more than an hour a day and none for the un­der twos.

France has just passed a bill ban­ning so­cial me­dia for chil­dren un­der 15. Spain has an­nounced plans to ban so­cial me­dia ac­cess for mi­nors un­der 16. Den­mark is set to ban so­cial me­dia for chil­dren un­der 15, ex­pect­ed as soon as mid-2026.

Greece, Nor­way, and Por­tu­gal are ac­tive­ly de­bat­ing or in the process of fi­nal­is­ing sim­i­lar un­der-15 or un­der-16 bans. Aus­tria is the lat­est coun­try to pro­pose so­cial me­dia re­stric­tion for young peo­ple. The coun­try is draft­ing leg­is­la­tion to ban un­der-14s from sites such as Tik­Tok. Sim­i­lar re­stric­tions took ef­fect in In­done­sia last week­end.

Even Chi­na is look­ing at leg­is­la­tion to lim­it so­cial me­dia use to 40 min­utes per day for un­der-eights, one hour per day for 8-16s, and two hours per day for 16-18s. They are al­so think­ing about pre­vent­ing mi­nors from ac­cess­ing the In­ter­net be­tween 10 pm and 6 am.

Why the flur­ry of ac­tiv­i­ty now? Be­cause we are now cer­tain that so­cial me­dia dam­ages chil­dren’s brains, caus­es them to think less and suf­fer from anx­i­ety and de­pres­sion. Be­cause it caus­es body dys­mor­phia and eat­ing dis­or­ders, cy­ber­bul­ly­ing and sui­cide and opens them up to groom­ing and sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion.

Now, an­oth­er front in the war against Big Tech has opened up in the good ole USA. Last Mon­day, in the first tri­al of its kind, a ju­ry in New Mex­i­co found Meta li­able for fail­ing to pro­tect young peo­ple from on­line dan­gers, in­clud­ing sex­u­al­ly ex­plic­it con­tent, so­lic­i­ta­tion and hu­man traf­fick­ing and or­dered the com­pa­ny to pay a $375 mil­lion penal­ty.

Then on Wednes­day, in Cal­i­for­nia, a young woman pre­vailed in a law­suit against Meta Plat­forms and Google’s YouTube, in which she ac­cused them of de­sign­ing their apps to be as ad­dic­tive and harm­ful to ado­les­cents as cig­a­rettes. Ju­rors found the tech com­pa­nies to be neg­li­gent in hav­ing failed to pro­vide ad­e­quate warn­ings about the po­ten­tial dan­gers of their prod­ucts.

What seemed to per­suade the ju­ry were fea­tures that Meta and YouTube had built in­to their soft­ware like in­fi­nite scroll, al­go­rith­mic rec­om­men­da­tions and au­to­play videos de­signed to get young users to com­pul­sive­ly en­gage with the plat­forms. In­ter­nal com­pa­ny doc­u­ments from Meta and YouTube ex­ec­u­tives showed they knew of and dis­cussed the neg­a­tive ef­fects of their prod­ucts on chil­dren. The ju­ry found that so­cial me­dia sites were built specif­i­cal­ly to be ad­dic­tive and that tech com­pa­nies know­ing­ly work to hook chil­dren for prof­it.

The so­lu­tion is not to tell par­ents what to do. Nor to put up warn­ing la­bels. Those help but are the easy way out for gov­ern­ments. The so­lu­tion is to make the tech com­pa­nies change their al­go­rithms to de­crease the ad­dic­tive process and if they don’t, pun­ish them with fines. A prece­dent has been set. So­cial me­dia is ad­dic­tive.