Is social media addiction real? Law and science collide in blockbuster federal suit

A blockbuster conflict successful national tribunal is acceptable to unfastened successful Oakland this month, pitting Silicon Valley against attorneys for the authorities of California successful a $1.4-trillion contention with existential stakes and perchance eye-watering payouts.

In existent Hollywood fashion, the record-smashing, celebrity-studded ineligible play is besides a sequel.

At the bosom of the combat is an essential, hotly contested question: Is societal media addiction adjacent real?

Meta’s answer, articulated crossed years of filings and months of litigation, is simply a resounding “no.”

Earlier this year, Meta mislaid 2 groundbreaking civilian suits successful authorities courts, with juries successful Santa Fe, N.M., and Los Angeles concluding its products were harmful to children successful verdicts rendered conscionable hours apart. The institution is appealing some cases.

The damages were comparatively small: $375 cardinal to New Mexico for enabling kid predators and $4.2 cardinal to Kaley Glenn-Mills successful Los Angeles for designing features to hook kids, figures good beneath Sandoz’s generic cause price-fixing colony and L.A.’s astir caller dog-bite payout, respectively.

But the verdicts’ interaction was seismic.

On Thursday, a New Mexico justice ordered Meta to wage an further $567 cardinal connected apical of the earlier harm judgment, ruling the institution was a “public nuisance.” In a July 29 net report, Meta said that the 2026 trials could “significantly impact” its bottommost line.

Now, attorneys wide successful California and 3 different states are hoping to parlay that occurrence into an unprecedented verdict successful national court, 1 that could beryllium acold much important — and orders of magnitude much costly — than immoderate civilian suit before.

The states allege Meta intentionally designed its products to addict kids and repeatedly lied to the nationalist astir it, telling parents and politicians its apps were harmless for children portion mining underage users for invaluable data. The suit seeks a startling $1.4 trillion successful damages from the company.

The company’s lawyers person filed a question to artifact the “staggering figure” from reaching jurors erstwhile the proceedings opens connected Aug. 18, arguing it is unprecedented.

Meta argues it can’t support precise young kids disconnected its apps, and that there’s adjacent grounds showing its products are bully for older adolescents arsenic suggesting they mightiness beryllium harmful.

To formed uncertainty connected the beingness of societal media addiction, Meta’s lawyers person zeroed successful connected the lack of a ceremonial diagnosis successful the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, often called the book of psychiatry, oregon the DSM.

“Courts — including the U.S. Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit — routinely notation to the DSM arsenic an authorization to pass the explanation and diagnosis of intelligence disorders,” attorneys for Meta wrote successful a question for summary judgement successful April.

“The information that neither of the 2 definitive authorities for diagnosing intelligence disorders recognizes the beingness of societal media addiction — aft having studied the contented and the lit — is fatal to the AGs’ halfway claims, particularly fixed the deficiency of admissible grounds to the contrary,” the filing said.

But the narration betwixt the manual and the courtroom is seldom truthful straightforward, experts argue.

“The DSM is aesculapian successful quality ... truthful the connection is typically medical,” said Dr. Michael MacIntyre, a forensic psychologist. “The instrumentality has a precise antithetic language, truthful anytime the DSM is utilized successful tribunal that has to beryllium translated.”

Even disorders specified arsenic schizophrenia — 1 of the earliest identified forms of madness, with descriptions dating backmost to past Egypt — cannot successful and of themselves conscionable the ineligible criteria for insanity, which is acrophobic with culpability, not suffering, the adept said.

Making the ineligible leap without a DSM diagnosis is adjacent harder.

“The DSM is ever catching up to the times,” said Carrie Goldberg, a plaintiff’s lawyer who helped pioneer the existent benignant of societal media litigation.

At the Glenn-Mills proceedings successful Los Angeles, Meta attorneys repeatedly hammered witnesses astir the deficiency of a listing — astatine times appearing to annoy jurors and trial the patience of the court.

Despite losing that bellwether, Meta continued to property the DSM statement successful its filings successful national court.

Then, successful precocious June, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez struck a large stroke to the company’s strategy, saying the term’s lack from the manual was “not dispositive” and could not settee the ineligible question of whether the ailment exists, oregon if ongoing technological statement indemnifies statements astir the apps’ safety.

“The technological literature, and defendants’ ain documents usage a assortment of presumption interchangeably, referring to ‘addictive’, ‘excessive’, ‘problematic’, oregon ‘compulsive’ use,” she wrote successful her June order. “The Court declines to gully lines betwixt these terms.”

The beingness of societal media addiction is simply a “material quality of fact” — 1 a assemblage should settle, not a judge, Gonzalez wrote.

As the justice noted successful her ruling, the ongoing contention has arsenic overmuch to bash with erstwhile and however the diagnostic gospels were compiled arsenic the technological validity of the ailment.

That’s due to the fact that societal media apps and the latest mentation of the DSM are astir precisely the aforesaid age. When the manual deed shelves successful May 2013, lone astir fractional of Americans had a smartphone. Facebook had conscionable acquired Instagram, Snapchat was hardly 2 years aged and TikTok was acold disconnected successful the future.

Today, much than 95% of kids ages 13 to 17 are connected the apps — astir a 3rd of them “almost constantly” — according to studies by the Pew Research Center and the National Institutes of Health.

A 2025 lit reappraisal successful the aesculapian diary Current Pediatric Reports showed astir two-thirds of 11- and 12-year-olds person societal media accounts — a usurpation of the apps’ presumption of service, which Meta and others reason they are each but powerless to prevent.

Science is inactive catching up to the shift, experts said.

“It’s not astonishing that societal media addiction is not successful the DSM yet,” said Dr. Jason Nagata, a prof of pediatrics astatine UC San Francisco who has published extensively connected behavioral problems associated with children’s usage of the platforms. “The process of processing diagnoses is not a accelerated one.”

Compared with chemic dependencies, which person been good understood since earlier the archetypal DSM was compiled successful 1952, the model for describing alleged behavioral addictions is highly new, helium and others said.

Gambling is the lone behavioral addiction presently listed successful the DSM. Though it archetypal appeared successful the manual’s 1980 variation arsenic “pathological gambling,” it was classified arsenic a signifier of addiction lone successful 2013, contempt having been observed and described that mode for centuries — astir famously by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Dr. Lara Ray, a prof of science who runs an addiction laboratory astatine UCLA, contrasted the mode scholars were capable to place and code addiction to caller thoroughfare drugs by gathering connected centuries of technological cognition astir older chemic dependencies.

Alcoholism has been formally studied for generations, arsenic person opioid-use upset and cigaret smoking, Ray explained. But nary comparable infrastructure exists to probe whether societal media is addictive and however that addiction mightiness beryllium identified and treated, nor is determination authorities backing to enactment it.

“A batch of this has yet to beryllium systematically studied and documented,” the prof said. “The subject is simply a small down what’s truly happening.”

Meanwhile, children progressively picture their ain acquisition of the apps successful diagnostic terms.

“It’s comparatively communal for teenagers to beryllium reporting symptoms of societal media addiction whether oregon not you judge it’s a ceremonial diagnosis,” Nagata said. “It’s important we marque it a ceremonial entry. If a diagnosis doesn’t exist, radical can’t get treated for it.”

While they hold for the adjacent variation of psychiatry’s bible, Nagata and others enactment galore of the structural changes sought by the states’ lawsuit, abstracted from wealth damages. The authorities attorneys wide person called for stricter property gates to support retired preteen users, stringent caps connected the clip that tin beryllium spent connected the apps, notification and privateness limits for teen accounts, and stronger safeguards to halt the exploitation of children by big users.

Many of those aforesaid changes were ordered by Judge Bryan Biedscheid successful New Mexico connected Thursday.

“People spot these companies arsenic nuisances that they tolerate,” Goldberg said. “What is scary to these companies is that juries person a batch of power.”