On Wednesday, a jury in Los Angeles found Meta and Google liable for designing products that are intentionally addictive and fail to warn users about the nature of their products.
This is huge news, a landmark judgment that will inform hundreds of cases in the future. While the plaintiff, a 20-year-old identified only as KGM, has been awarded $6 million in damages, it is the verdict itself that is most damaging as it opens the door to many more lawsuits against tech companies.
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KGM’s lawyers said in their closing remarks: “How do you get a child to never put the phone down? It’s called the technique of addiction. They engineered it, they put these features on the phones. They are Trojan horses: they look wonderful and amazing … but you invite them in and they take over.”
Why is it so hard to put down our phones? Are social media and scrolling really as addictive as drugs like nicotine and tobacco? Should we be protecting our kids from technology, or is this a content issue that needs to be monitored by parents rather than an app design issue? I will break down the scientific research behind the verdict below.
While I think it’s pretty obvious to any phone user that social media apps have addictive qualities, there are additional concerns about the effects of heavy digital device use on children’s developing brains.
A literature review by Italian pediatricians linked digital addiction in children with depression, diet and psychological problems, as well as ‘sleep, addiction, anxiety, gender-related problems, behavioral problems, body image, physical activity, online care, vision, headaches and dental care’. KGM was six years old when she first became addicted to social media, according to her testimony.
Researchers in Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands have also linked ‘high use of social media’ among young people to ‘a statistically significant change in the developmental trajectory of cerebellum volumes’, a part of the brain associated with emotional control. It could literally affect the physical development of the brain.
Another report states: “frequent use of social media may be associated with distinct changes in the developing brain in the amygdala (important for emotional learning and behavior) and the prefrontal cortex (important for impulse control, emotional regulation, and moderation of social behavior), and may increase sensitivity to social rewards and punishments”.
However, it is worth noting that none of these results are yet conclusive.
Below are three ways Meta and Google could have designed their platforms to encourage addictive behavior, supported by science and quotes from the lawsuit.
1. The dopamine cycle
In a report by The Guardian in 2020, Meta employees are quoted as saying “oh my gosh y’all, IG is a drug” in an email exchange, while a colleague replies: “Lol, I mean all social media. We’re basically pushers.”
They are not entirely wrong. The basis of addiction is about hijacking the ‘mesolimbic system’, the part of the brain responsible for associating certain behaviors with rewards, both natural (food, sex, play) and artificial (drugs like alcohol and nicotine and notifications). When a reward is achieved, dopamine is released.
A study on adolescent addiction linked activation of the mesolimbic pathway to social media use, stating that children “are often victims of an inexorable ‘dopamine cycle’ created in a loop of ‘desire’ induced by endless social media feeds, ‘seeking and anticipating rewards’ in the form of photo-tagging, that the latter continue to be triggers, and that the latter continue to ‘trigger’ behaviour.”
“The overactivation of the dopamine system in such individuals may further increase the risk of addictive behavior or pathological changes that lead to a decrease in the enjoyment of natural rewards.” Basically, all you want to do is keep rolling, like an addict looking for an endless fix, because natural rewards no longer provide the same pleasure as rolling.
According to CNN, KGM’s attorney Mark Lanier said in his opening statement, “This case is about two of the richest corporations that have developed addiction in the brains of children,” Lanier said in his opening statement. “Swiping, for a child like Kaley, this movement is a lever on a slot machine. But every time she swipes, it’s not for money, it’s for mental stimulation.”
2. The infinite scroll
Now that a swipe is a pleasurable tool, the next crucial tool in social media’s arsenal of addiction is the infinite scroll: the ability to swipe forever, to continue activating and hijacking the mesolimbic pathway for as long as the user wishes. Similarly, video autoplay on platforms like YouTube and Netflix helps remove barriers and pauses, encouraging viewers to continue watching.
KGM’s lawyers cite the infinitely scrollable feeds and video autoplay as features designed to keep people on the apps, maintain attention and encourage addictive behavior. But that’s okay because the inventor of the scrollable feed, Aza Raskin, apologized when he unleashed this horror on the world.
3. Algorithmically encouraged negative content
Have you ever heard of ‘happy scrolling’? Of course not. ‘Doomscrolling’ on the other hand is called that for a reason. Negativity is more addictive than positive content: a 2024 Cambridge University report said that “it has long been recognized that news-related social media posts that use negative language are retweeted more, thus in turn rewarding users who create negative content through greater exposure”.
Combine this with the endless scrolling feed and addictive, casino-like nature of social media platforms and you get doomscrolling, a constant stream of bad news, furious user-generated content and messages that you can never get enough of unless you do this, or buy to, or resemble this.
KGM used Instagram filters on “almost all” of her photos and “had not experienced the negative feelings associated with her body dysmorphia diagnosis before she began using social media and filters,” according to the Al Jazeera court report.
The same scientific report cited above on brain development also said that “during the early teenage years, when identities and sense of self-worth are forming, brain development is particularly susceptible to social pressure, peer opinions and peer comparison”.
The bottom line? Children are easily impressionable, and if online negativity is more rewarding than positivity, unfettered access to an endless stream of content designed to make users feel bad in order to increase engagement will distort their worldview. According to the jury, in this case the buck stops with the algorithm’s designers.
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