Brittany Luce

And when does a social media norm cross the line from personal habit into personal pathology?

Hello, hello.

I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.

NPR correspondent Shannon Bond, welcome back to It's Been a Minute.

Hi, Brittany.

Great to be here.

Okay, so Shannon, you cover a lot of tech for NPR.

Off the jump, are you willing to admit...

You are or are not addicted to social media.

Geez, oh, Pete.

Wow, they really meant it when they said kids are a mirror.

I didn't know it was like that.

Oh, my gosh.

Well, the trial that's happening in Los Angeles right now gets to the heart of the matter.

A jury is going to have to tease out whether or not tech companies intentionally built their platforms to hook young users and keep them on the platforms and whether or not that in turn caused harm to young people.

And this is just the first of several cases that will make their way through the courts in the coming months and years.

Okay, so of course there's obvious things to point at that definitely feel addictive.

Like, you know, you pointed out infinite scroll, autoplay videos, frequent notifications, and recommendation algorithms.

What else do the plaintiffs allege against platforms like Meta, YouTube, Snapchat, etc.

?