The Next Social Cigarette

Written by Brook Schaaf

You probably recall that back in March there was a lawsuit that could “reshape social media.” It was dubbed Big Tech’s Big Tobacco moment, both because of the similarly addictive nature of social media and because of the similar defensive playbook used, though it failed for Big Tobacco. 

The playbook also appears to be failing for Big Tech. The most prominent case in March was in California, where, as I guessed, a jury found Meta and YouTube liable for $6 million in damages to a woman known as Kaley or K.G.M. TikTok and Snapchat had previously settled. In the same month, a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million for misleading consumers about the safety of its platforms and endangering children. Last week, a judge ordered an additional $567 million, bringing the total to $942 million.

There are reportedly 40 other suits by state attorneys general (meaning the effort is bipartisan) and thousands of individual lawsuits, which a federal appeals court just allowed to go forward. The suits appear to be related to a variety of harms, covering addiction, negligence, exposure, and predation. From The Information: “The [New Mexico] case grew out of a state undercover operation in which investigators created accounts on Facebook and Instagram posing as users who were younger than 14. Those accounts received sexually explicit material and solicitations from adults.” Have fun defending that in court. 

As I noted back in March, Big Tech can easily absorb any financial penalties as the cost of doing business, and governments would likely be pleased to plump it as a regular or irregular revenue source. But the New Mexico ruling added another element. One writer wondered whether it might be “Social Media’s Seatbelt Moment for Children.” 

The judge also ordered a series of measures for young users in New Mexico, including things like stricter age verification, a limit of 90 hours of monthly use for under-18s, restrictions on push notifications during school hours and overnight, parental consent for displaying the number of likes on a child’s posts, and restrictions on certain interactions between minors and Meta’s AI chatbots.

I remember when I was a teenager, I had to get a work permit that capped my working hours. Can these kinds of restrictions be circumvented? Sure, but they’re going to put a big dent in usage, especially when kids have access to any number of AI tools and other channels for communication, like gaming (perhaps its own future lawsuit). 

Social media has followed a hyper-accelerated social progression: smoking, “a custom loathsome to the eye” (1604), eventually became fashionable, then ubiquitous, then accepted, then tolerated, then distrusted, then, finally, loathsome again. Though it may have steamrolled over initial concerns, social media now appears to be somewhere along the same path. What was once treated almost entirely as a delightful new way to connect with people is increasingly something parents restrict, governments regulate, and users themselves talk about limiting.

The analogy certainly isn’t perfect. In one respect, sugar may actually be a better comparison. Smoking doesn’t merely harm the smoker; it smells, produces secondhand smoke, and imposes itself on everyone nearby. The harms attributed to excessive social media use are generally borne more directly by the person consuming it. Like sugar, the product itself may never become socially unacceptable. Instead, the emerging consensus may simply be that we consume far too much of it.

Either way, there has been a striking shift from delight and connection toward distrust and even alienation. You can now say “use social media responsibly” in much the same way you would say it about alcohol, and do so non-ironically.

For better or worse, prohibitions and restrictions are, like censorship, largely effective. Less time on Facebook and Instagram will mean more time somewhere else. With luck, that somewhere will be the open web. With less luck, it will be Roblox.