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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Okay, I'm going to pose an impossible question to you. It's a totally not a yes or no question that I'm going to pose to you as a yes or no question. Is social media addictive?
Yeah, so I would say it is a yes or no question. And some people feel very strongly yes. And some people feel very strongly no. And that's a problem.
So I don't know about all of you listening, but sometimes I am scrolling through social media and I lose track of time. And suddenly I'm watching a rug cleaning video at three o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday. Some of you might call this kind of experience quote-unquote addictive and bad for your mental health. And you wouldn't be alone.
In fact, you'd relate to more than a thousand individual plaintiffs who are taking social media companies to court over the addictiveness and mental health impacts of their platforms. These court cases are the tip of a user-led backlash against social media. Is social media bad for your health?
A jury will eventually decide, but today I want to explore that question with a tech correspondent and an addiction expert who can help us tease out what addiction is. 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.
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Chapter 2: Is social media addictive?
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.
Well, I'll tell you a story that illustrates this, which is that my nine-year-old said, Mom, you have to delete Instagram from your phone. You are on it too much. And I did. And, like, I don't keep it on my phone. I'm not using it regularly. And I regret to inform you, I feel like I'm probably sleeping better, less distracted.
Geez, oh, Pete. Wow, they really meant it when they said kids are a mirror. I didn't know it was like that.
I didn't know it was like that. He's like, mom, I see you. I see you. And you need to get it off your phone. And he was not wrong.
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.
What is the through line connecting these cases? So number one, they are saying companies like Meta, right, which makes Instagram and Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, have intentionally designed their apps to be addictive, to be really hard to put down. So things like infinite scroll, those constant notifications you get, like the way the algorithm works.
So number one, they're saying the companies have done this intentionally. They want to keep you using them as much as possible. And then they're sort of saying as a second step, that overuse that these apps have encouraged among kids is contributing to a mental health crisis. We've been talking a lot in recent years about a mental health crisis among kids.
The plaintiffs are claiming that because of excessive use of these apps, it's causing things like anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and like I said, in some cases, really, really tragic outcomes.
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Chapter 3: What are the legal implications of social media addiction?
They're saying these companies knew about these harms and made these products anyway, you know, included these features anyway. They're saying essentially they were prioritizing their profits over the safety of children. You know, that is an argument that the plaintiffs are very explicit. They are saying this is like the tobacco companies. You know, you had this research.
You knew these were problems and you hid that from the public and you continue to push this product out. And to make that argument, the plaintiffs are relying on a ton of internal documents that they've gotten in this legal process from the company. So studies that the companies have done about the way kids use their apps and
You know, marketing research, all kinds of internal communications that in many cases, you know, when you sort of when you're looking at the pieces that have shown up in these court documents, you know, some of the stuff does look pretty damning.
You have the companies talking about parts of products, you know, working like slot machines or, you know, really wanting to keep kids using it more and more. Now, the companies say this is being taken out of context, that they're, you know, cherry picking quotes here. But look, we know how tech companies work, right? They need users. They constantly need like a new influx of people using them.
People get older.
That's how they make money.
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Chapter 4: How do social media platforms contribute to mental health issues?
That's how they make money. I mean, for their part, the companies are pushing back. Meta, for example, says that, quote, these lawsuits misportray our company. We stand by our record of putting teen safety first. and will keep making improvements, end quote.
Yeah, I mean, pretty obviously they dispute these allegations, right? They point to the safety measures they've already put in place for kids. But they also make this larger argument. They say this idea around addiction, they really contest that. They say there is not a clinical diagnosis of addiction to social media.
There isn't scientific evidence to prove that using social media affects your brain the same way that an addictive drug would. They also argue that there is not enough evidence to prove that the overuse of social media in these cases is what led to those mental health harms that the plaintiffs are claiming.
That's a lot to take in. I know you see parallels between this moment with social media and the big tobacco lawsuits from the 90s. How are they alike and how are they different?
There are lots of differences, right, between a cigarette and a social media app. I would argue that there's probably very little benefit. You could argue at all about cigarettes. You know, social media is more complicated. And I think that's one of the things that really is going to be interesting to see how the jury reacts to these cases. Because
Like, look, I think there's no denying there could be really negative consequences of overuse of social media. But, you know, the science isn't really clear that that is sort of a one size fits all outcome. There's lots of beneficial aspects of kids using social media. You know, there's connection to friends.
There's connection to communities, especially for kids who might be feeling isolated or you'll be able to reach out to other people. So I think there's some differences there. But in terms of this kind of moment of scrutiny of saying, you know, do we trust these companies?
Do we trust them the way, you know, what they know about their products and then sort of the public face they're putting on them? I think that's sort of where the parallel is most clear.
Well, Shannon, thank you so much. This has been extremely informative and I'm anxious to see how this unfolds.
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Chapter 5: What are the arguments against social media addiction claims?
I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
It's my pleasure. Yeah. Don't be in doom and gloom. Change is possible.
That was Carl Eric Fisher, addiction psychiatrist and author of the book, The Urge, Our History of Addiction. This episode of It's Been a Minute was produced by Corey Antonio Rose. This episode was edited by Nina Potok. Our supervising producer is Barton Girdwood. Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sanguini. All right. That's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Luce.
Talk soon.