Who’s to blame? The teens with their eyes on the phone screen all day, or the people who make the stuff they’re watching?
That’s the big question in a high-profile federal lawsuit against Meta, which got underway last week in California and is expected to go for many weeks more.
A coalition of 29 state attorneys general are suing Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, claiming it deliberately harmed children with the design of its platforms.
Calling this a major case is an understatement. At stake are potential damages reportedly ranging from $200 billion to $1.4 trillion.
That’s real money. Even to Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. In fact, $1.4 trillion is pretty much the entire market valuation of his company.
The plaintiffs are claiming Meta
knew exactly what it was doing by making its apps addictive, and that millions of kids have, as a result, suffered mental health problems from anxiety to depression to suicide.
Meta claims it only engineers things for ease of use, provides plenty of warnings to users and makes sure to offer tools for parents and kids as protection.
The case will ultimately come down to who the judge determines is at fault, the user or the maker. But what I find most interesting is this:
Meta’s lawyers actually have claimed that “social media addiction doesn’t exist.”
As the kids say today:
Oh. My. God.
Addiction in your pocket
Anyone who has spent a week in the company of a typical American teenager knows that social media is easily as addictive as cigarettes or alcohol, but with one insidious difference:
You don’t need to go anywhere to buy it.
In many cases (assuming you’re using Wi-Fi or your parents are paying for your phone plan) you don’t even need money. No digging in your pockets for another 10 bucks to buy a pack of smokes or a six-pack of beer. And, oh yeah, you don’t need a fake ID to consume social media.
All this, plus the endless mechanisms Facebook and Instagram use to keep your eyeballs glued – endless scrolling, personalized recommendations, “likes” that make you feel good, image-altering technology that makes you look good – have created an undeniable addiction problem amongst young people.
It’s the reason countries like Australia and the U.K. have already banned social media for kids under 16, and why many other nations are considering similar legislation.
You don’t go to such lengths if there’s not a problem.
But I sense that in Zuckerberg’s world, he and the folks in charge of his company truly don’t see this as a problem. Because they believe in a world where every action from saying “good morning” to sharing your deepest darkest secrets should be done ‒ not face to face ‒ but face to screen. It’s not only normal, it’s the inevitable future.
And therein lies the biggest problem.
They may be right.
We can't wait to fix this
Even if Meta should lose this case, the genie isn’t going back in the bottle. And the teens who live on social media today will soon be young adults relying on artificial intelligence to do everything from write their letters and schedule their vacations to talk them through an emotional breakup.
What I worry about is 30 or 40 years from now, when there is no one left to talk about life before cellphones, to recall the simple joy of catching up with people by visiting them or the decorum that came with respecting a person’s privacy.
What happens when there’s no one around who can recall waiting for a letter to arrive, or wondering what someone they are about to meet is like, without having already studied what others have written or said about them online?
What happens when no one is around to recall when people didn’t secretly film other people and blast it over the internet, and you couldn’t instantly tell the world what you thought about something and it couldn’t instantly tell you back?
Here’s what happens. Lawsuits like this one against Meta will seem quaint and dated. Our addiction to social media and AI will be so complete, suggesting we undo it will be like suggesting everyone stop driving.
Which means no matter the outcome of this Meta case, the only thing standing in the way of a child’s digital immersion is his or her parents. We have to resist the “all the other kids at school have one” excuse. We have to see the silliness of “how will I get in touch with them in kindergarten?”
We have to drop the idea that our preteens are entitled to their “space” and their “privacy,” because while we are busy trying to be the best woke version of parenthood, Meta, Google, TikTok and others are more than happy to jump in and take advantage of back-patting.
And if you think that these companies are more concerned about your kids’ welfare than their money, you need to wake up and smell the stock market.
You remember when Big Tobacco stood before Congress and raised hands saying nicotine was not addictive? That was only 32 years ago. But it’s now such an obvious lie, the moment is considered a joke.
We’re at that moment with Meta’s denial of social media addiction. We better not wait 32 years to do something about it. Our kids will be grown, our memories will be fading and so will any notion of what we used to consider childhood.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates on his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow @mitchalbom on x.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mitch Albom: Meta lawsuit should prompt big changes, regardless of verdict
