Throughout her time as co-president of Lean On Me College Park, a non-crisis emotional support textline, Aliza Syyid has heard about many college students’ mental health challenges.
She said she has seen how these struggles can be exacerbated by the influence of social media, especially because of its addictive nature. But the outcome of a landmark trial may change how social media companies approach their users’ mental health.
On March 25, a jury in California found Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, and YouTube liable for negligence for designing their platforms to be addictive without concern for the well-being of young users, the Associated Press reported.
“People tend to blame themselves a lot for using social media too much,” Syyid, a senior information systems major, said. “But I think this case was interesting because it kind of talked about how you shouldn’t necessarily put all the blame on yourself.”
The plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman, claimed her mental health struggles were worsened by her addiction to social media — an addiction that the case argues was caused by the platforms’ algorithms. Meta must pay $2.1 million in damages and YouTube must pay $900,000, according to the Associated Press.
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TikTok and Snap, which owns Snapchat, settled before the trial began, the outlet reported.
Social media platforms are designed to keep users online for as long as possible to earn more revenue from advertisements, Jessica Vitak, a professor at the University of Maryland’s information college told The Diamondback. Infinite scroll features and tailored algorithms make these platforms more addictive, she said.
Teenagers and younger users are more susceptible to harmful content, such as posts that promote eating disorders or gambling, Vitak said. She also hopes content creators begin to recognize the effects of social media on their followers and consider if the content they are posting could have a negative effect.
“It’s not always best for people to just be mindlessly scrolling for 30, 60, 90 minutes at a time,” she said. “It never stops — you never run out of content.”
Vitak said the results of this trial and other similar lawsuits could put more pressure on social media platforms to adjust how they display their content to users.
However, Vitak said both content creators and social media platforms do not have incentives to focus on users’ mental health, unless lawsuit penalties begin to have a more significant financial impact on the companies.
“In the end, if everything is coming down to money, the content creators want to make money, the platforms want to make money,” she said. “They’re just going to be constantly looking for ways to optimize the financial outcomes associated with what they’re doing.”
Though the corporations only had to pay a comparatively small amount of their funds, the trial serves as a statement that people are willing to hold social media platforms accountable, Syyid said. The case serves as a “wake-up call” to limit social media usage, she added.
Syyid thinks the comparison aspect of social media can worsen its users’ mental health and increase pressures to get approval from peers. She also noted that the spread of information and news on social media, such as whether or not someone posts about a certain topic, can cause tension between users.
Andrea Martinez, a sophomore family health major, said she has learned in her classes about how social media can make adolescents feel more anxious. Young users often stress about how they are perceived online and the number of notifications they get, she said.
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Martinez also learned about how adolescent brains are malleable, making it easier for young users to become addicted to social media.
“When people think of addiction, they think of drugs or alcohol,” she said. “But it’s important to think about that addiction is not only those sort of vices, but also social media.”
Anita Atwell Seate, an associate professor at this university’s communication department, told The Diamondback she thinks social media companies will begin to include more social media warnings for young adults and children.
She said she believes warnings could help remind users to reflect on their social media usage and acknowledge that passively using social media is not healthy.
Part of social media’s appeal is that it can help users’ connect with people in their personal lives and across the world, Atwell Seate said. It has also helped to promote representation of people in marginalized communities and helped them to connect with those who share the same identity, they added.
“Humans are social animals. We do want connection — we need connection to survive, you know, and to be healthy and happy,” Atwell Seate said. “[Social media] gives us positive things too, but how can we safeguard to enjoy the positives while also minimizing the negatives?”
Contact staff writer Nicole Pilsbury at nicpils@terpmail.umd.edu.
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