Social media ruling: what will liability for addiction mean?
A US court has ordered Meta and Google to pay a 20-year-old plaintiff millions in compensation after ruling that tech companies can be held liable for addiction caused by social media use. The two companies have announced they will appeal the decision. Commentators debate whether this hails a fundamental shift.
Pressure on tech giants to take responsibility
Ilta-Sanomat hopes that tech companies will now change their practices:
“A whole series of new legal proceedings now awaits the major tech firms. The plaintiffs include parents whose children took their own lives after falling victim to sexual abuse or bullying on social media. Undoubtedly, the debate over the legal regulation of tech giants will also gain momentum. … The problems would be considerably less severe if the tech giants took more responsibility for the content on their platforms and adapted their apps' algorithms to make them less addictive. Hopefully, legal proceedings and the huge damage this does to their reputations will now force their hand.”
Dawn of a new era
For Svenska Dagbladet, the US ruling is a sign that the boom years are over for these tech companies:
“Now that these platforms have become an integral part of many young people's daily lives, at least parents will now try to use the ruling as justification to restrict their use. Some advertisers may wish to avoid being associated with these platforms. ... Although there are likely to be numerous appeals before final judgements are handed down, the case of the 20-year-old woman marks a clear turning point. It could be that social media has reached its peak – and this is the beginning of a decline in their use. Not everyone will immediately delete TikTok from their mobile, but a new era is dawning.”
Perpetrators knew what they were doing
Psychotherapist Alberto Pellai comments in Avvenire:
“This case gained momentum not only because parents demanded an assessment of social media's share of the responsibility for their children's mental health problems (some of whom have committed suicide after creating a social media profile), but also because numerous internal company documents were discovered which prove that senior management were well aware of the health risks. ... Instead of developing preventive and corrective measures to protect minors, the company increased the risk by knowingly and deliberately filling social media with addictive content without warning users of the risks.”
Clock ticking for Like giants
The industry's days are numbered, Trends-Tendances predicts:
“If these corporations are forced to fundamentally change the way their apps function, their whole business model will start to crumble, because our attention is their basic commodity. If you scroll for half an hour before going to sleep, your brain is, in a sense, being fragmented and sold off to advertisers. Every minute less spent on scrolling is a minute less of advertising, and advertising is basically what they all sell. The tobacco giants spent 20 years in legal appeals. Ultimately they were brought to their knees by being forced to pay horrendous fines and having to print health warnings on their packaging. The clock is ticking for the Like giants.”
The battle must also be won at home
El País argues that the tech giants are not solely to blame:
“This affects us all, yet we ignore it because millions of us use social media every day and are addicted to it ourselves. … There has been a long-running debate about how social media influences minors and how we can protect them from the evil 'tech oligarchs'. Perhaps we should admit that we adults have also lost control and need to finally look up from our mobile phones. ... The battle against apps cannot only be won in court but must also be fought at home.”
The ruling could soon go viral
The Economist hopes that the decision will set a precedent:
“Some lawyers have compared the claims to the cases brought against tobacco companies in earlier decades, which led to widespread regulation of the industry. America is not the only place where social apps are facing greater scrutiny. ... A 30-country study last year by Ipsos, a pollster, asked whether under-14s should be excluded from social media, and found a majority in favour in every single country. The verdict in California may soon go viral.”
Turn off the toxic algorithm
It would be possible to turn things around, Corriere della Sera writes:
“This is the end of the era of the toxic algorithm. Social media was not always like this: in the early years Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter were not designed to manufacture addictions by amplifying content that exploits our weaknesses and darkest sides. Engagement algorithms were introduced a decade ago. And the development only accelerated with the rise of TikTok. This shift has produced business empires, but it has also bolstered populism and eroded democracies. And the brunt of the burden has been carried by those young people and kids whom some psychologists have dubbed 'The Anxious Generation' [Jonathan Haidt, 2024].”
Architects are responsible for the spaces they build
The Independent reflects:
“For years, Meta and other companies were able to get away with presenting themselves as the architects of a kind of unruly town square: they just provided the space, they suggested, and it wasn't their fault if some people used that to bully, abuse and trick people. But any good architect knows that the things you build decide how people behave: a badly-designed space leads to badly-behaved people in it. And, more importantly, it is about what you choose not to do: if you put a vast, swirling, malevolent and unknown void in the middle of your city, you have to take a little responsibility when people fall into it.”