Cecilia Kang

And these very addictive products that use features like infinite scrolling, meaning it's just so easy to keep scrolling and scrolling.

And things like autoplay videos where right after you finish a video, the next one's queued up before you even think about it.

and algorithms that direct you and recommend particular content that she has found to be very toxic, that all these features led her to overuse social media and become addicted.

And that, in turn, led to lots of mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and body image issues for her.

So the next big wave begins around June in federal court.

They're all bundled together, and they're brought by attorneys general in dozens of states, as well as school districts.

And those are really interesting, Rachel, in that they're charging the companies with being public nuisances.

The fact that they, as school districts and states, have had to shoulder the costs of mental health services,

phone programs within schools, all kinds of programs to deal with a youth crisis.

And so they are suing the companies for monetary damages.

And they're also saying that they would like to see big changes within the companies, that the platforms have to give up some of these addictive technology features.

What these plaintiffs have to prove is that social media is linked to addiction.

And that's going to be hard.

It's going to be a new sort of argument that hasn't been tested before.

And so they're going to have to show that there is expert evidence that the use of tools like infinite scrolling on TikTok and on Instagram and autoplay of video are

features that have led to compulsive use and that there is a direct link between the technology and behavior.

And they'll also have to show that these companies knew all along that their products were harmful and that they withheld what they knew from the public.

So there have been numerous studies done on the mental health effects of social media.

But what the plaintiffs are going to really rely on is hundreds of thousands of documents that they've collected in discovery ahead of these trials that the plaintiff's lawyers say show that the companies knew that

that there was a problem, then they found internally that there was a lot of troubling evidence about their products and how they affected young people.