Recently, a California jury found the tech giants Meta and Google guilty for the depression and anxiety which ensued in a young woman following her compulsive use of social media. The court found the corporations liable for features that cause children to become addicted to the platforms and that it results in the aforementioned mental health distress. Many are calling this ruling social media’s tobacco moment, citing parallels between the case and the drawn-out legal battles against tobacco companies marketing and selling cigarettes which were shown to cause cancer. Legal mandates and precedents have long influenced how the public begins to view the health impacts of various products, cigarettes included. Thus, there is a lot to be learned about the parallels between these two cases, and this case has groundbreaking implications for the public and legal perception of the impact of social media on mental health and as importantly, the way that it can inform the field of psychiatry going forward.
The intersection of medicine, policy, and public perception
As we have seen before, the intersection of medicine and policy can be extremely important in shifting public perception and spurring action. Starting in the 1930s, the tobacco industry was taking hold in society and even utilizing doctors to promote cigarettes. This carried well for several decades following, and it was not until the 1964 Surgeon General’s report claiming that cigarette smoking is causally related to lung cancer that more drastic impacts were made. What ensued afterwards was a public perceptual reframing of what cigarettes were doing to health. Government reports in 1988 documented tobacco use as an addiction with significant medical complications, public policies began to push for societal efforts to reduce smoking in citizens, and legal punishments mandated that the tobacco industry pay fines after being found guilty of racketeering in 1998 with the Master Settlement Agreement.
Since then, there have been significant developments in behavioral methods and Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved prescription medications aimed to combat the illnesses of tobacco addiction. The question now is how long will it take to advance newer treatments for the problems caused by social media and how the verdict will impact this timeline. All this to say, there are parallels and significant trends to be seen in the way that policy and the justice system can influence medicine and begin to affect changes in the health of others.
The psychological underpinnings of addictive platforms
This “tobacco moment” in the realm of social media means we are now in the response phase to see how the medical field pivots to accommodate the findings of the verdict. The court documents against the social media companies highlighted features such as infinite scroll, push notifications, ephemeral content, and algorithm-generated recommendations that trigger the responses that keep users coming back. These all have startling psychological underpinnings known to generate compulsive behavior capitalizing on strategies that ensure continued engagement.
The impact of social media on mental health is not new in both the research and clinical side of society and medicine. What is now of notable concern, as per this ruling, are the facets which underlie the addictive nature of social media that the court found these companies guilty of exploiting. We are already seeing tech companies responding using digital wellness tools and age verifications to reduce harm, but the case addressed many of these features deeming them ineffective. Much like cigarettes, when found to be unhealthy they were rebranded to demonstrate that they, instead of being healthy, were the least unhealthy of the other companies selling them, a marketing approach which was condemned.
Reconciling legal findings with psychiatric research
Another startling parallel is the quiet, creeping nature of the negative impact of both social media and smoking, impacts which took several years to be realized, scientifically validated, and then reported to the general public in a consistent and coherent message. This is also time that allows companies to undergo their own research, to understand how to better sell their products and appeal to sensitivities in consumers’ minds.
Indeed, there is a lot to learn from forthcoming cases against the social media companies, and in those additional access will be gained to information about how social media products are marketed, sustained, and executed. What has already been brought to light are the intentional tactics which may be contributing to illnesses and now legal affirmation to social media-induced mental health harm. To still be learned is how psychiatry and the medical field will adapt newer, tailored approaches to cases of illness perpetuated by social media and whether it will do so steadfastly. So far, social media addiction is not a distinct mental health disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR), although social media is now recognized as a contributing risk factor for anxiety and depressive states. Now, we will see how the gap between legal findings and medical research is reconciled to prevent people from undergoing further harm.
Oliver Power is a medical assistant.
