A jury in Los Angeles may have just done for social media what early lawsuits did for Big Tobacco. Outside the courtroom, families who said they have lost children to the effects of these platforms gathered in shirts that read “We Are K.G.M.,” expressing solidarity with the 20-year-old plaintiff. Wednesday, the jury of the landmark case K.G.M. vs. Meta and Google found the owners of Instagram and YouTube negligent for conduct that raises a question the country is just beginning to grapple with: What if app designs do not merely entail potential hazards, but are created deliberately to be harmful?
Contrary to the common comparison, social media is not addictive in quite the same way cigarettes are. For one, platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are engineered to exploit what Judson Brewer, a Brown University neuroscientist, psychiatrist and addiction researcher, calls the “strongest type of reinforcement learning known”: intermittent reinforcement. Cigarettes provide a predictable satisfaction to a craving, but when our brains recognize uncertainty about whether we will receive a reward, such as a like or a comment, the mind says: “Hey, pay attention, because we need to figure out if that’s dangerous or if it’s nutritive.”
Also, unlike cigarettes, social media is constantly being redesigned to better capture and hold our attention. Documents from a 2024 lawsuit against TikTok illustrate how TikTok carefully tracked engagement metrics to inform addictive design features such as continuous autoplay and algorithmically tailored content.
TikTok even used language consistent with how we therapists talk about addiction, tracking user “habit moments,” the point at which engagement shifts from casual and intentional to more automatic, habitual behavior.
In my practice as a clinical psychologist, I regularly assess a person’s technology habits. I often find technology overuse is closely intertwined with mental health concerns — both as a symptom of underlying struggles and as a primary driver of psychological distress. I also find that individuals are often ashamed of their relationship with technology and have typically had little to no success managing it without professional help.