A series of court cases alleging that major social media companies contribute harm to the mental health of America’s youth began this week in Los Angeles. The lawsuits named Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube, and argue that their platforms were deliberately designed to maximize engagement among young users in ways that plaintiffs say fostered compulsive use and psychological harm.
At the heart of the litigation are contested scientific and legal questions: Is social media intentionally addicting? Does social media use contribute to depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia and other mental health disorders? And to what extent can social media’s effects be disentangled from the many other biological, social and environmental factors that influence adolescent mental health?
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To tackle these questions, Straight Arrow News dug into the science.
Wave of legal battles
In the first of nine bellwether cases, a 20-year-old woman identified in court filings as KGM claimed she became addicted to social media as a child and subsequently developed depression, anxiety and body dysmorphia.
Her case is part of a broader wave of litigation in recent years by individuals, school districts and state attorneys general. Some contend that social media companies knowingly deployed features — such as algorithmic recommendation systems, infinite scroll and social validation metrics — that disproportionately affected adolescents and contributed to a youth mental health crisis.
In a separate case in New Mexico, the state attorney general has alleged that Meta failed to adequately protect minors from sexual exploitation on its platforms.
The legal battles unfold amid growing political scrutiny of social media’s impact on children and teens. In 2024, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms to highlight potential risks for adolescents. Late last year, Australia implemented a law requiring certain platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent adolescents younger than 16 from holding accounts.
If plaintiffs prevail, the rulings could carry substantial financial and regulatory consequences for the social media giants and potentially reshape platform design standards across the industry.
What makes social media so compelling?
Social media platforms are engineered to sustain attention, and researchers frequently point to psychological reward processes that can reinforce repeated checking and prolonged use, James Roberts, a professor at Baylor University, told SAN.
One commonly cited mechanism is intermittent reinforcement — the same reward pattern observed in slot machines. Users do not know when a post will receive a surge of likes, when a message will arrive or when they will encounter especially engaging content. That unpredictability strengthens habit formation because variable rewards are more powerful at sustaining behavior than consistent ones, Roberts said.
Short-form video platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts rely on highly refined recommendation algorithms that continuously personalize content to maximize engagement. These apps analyze user behavior in real time and deliver material that is emotionally salient and often serendipitous — introducing unexpected but appealing content just as interest fades — to extend time on the platform.
Design features such as infinite scroll reduce natural stopping cues. Visible social metrics such as likes, follower counts or shares embed social comparison into the experience.
Adolescents may be particularly susceptible because reward sensitivity and social evaluation processes are heightened during teenage development, while impulse control systems are still maturing.
The debate at the heart of the ongoing court cases is not whether these mechanisms exist — they are well documented in behavioral science — but how often they translate into clinically meaningful impairment.
What does it mean for social media to be “addictive?”
Nationwide surveys show that teens spend up to five hours every day on social media. But simply using social media a lot does not necessarily mean users are addicted.
Researchers often distinguish between passive and active social media engagement. Passive use — for example, scrolling through feeds without interacting, sometimes referred to as “doomscrolling” — is more consistently linked to negative outcomes such as social comparison and lower mood. Active use — such as posting content or directly messaging friends — has, in some studies, been associated with positive mental health effects. But even active social media engagement is not equivalent to face-to-face connection and does not provide the same psychological benefits.
Psychologists evaluate six components to determine whether a behavior is addictive: salience, meaning the behavior comes to dominate a person’s thoughts and routines; mood modification, or the ability to reliably change how someone feels; tolerance, when increasing amounts are needed over time to achieve the same effect; withdrawal, marked by distress when the behavior stops; conflict, when the behavior creates problems in work, school or relationships; and relapse, defined by unsuccessful attempts to cut back despite negative consequences.
Numerous studies have concluded that social media can be addictive for some, though not all, users.
One large survey, published in 2022 that included nearly 280,000 adolescents across 44 countries, found that about 11% of participants showed signs of compulsive social media behavior and struggled to control their use. Some studies have reported higher rates.
Researchers have consistently documented that younger users and females are more likely to become addicted to social media.
While some compulsive behaviors, such as gambling disorder, are formally recognized mental health conditions, social media addiction is not currently an official diagnosis.
Social media and mental health
Rising social media use has coincided with declines in adolescent well-being and increases in loneliness, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation and suicide.
In 2012, about 34% of teens checked social media multiple times a day. By 2020, when some 95% of teenagers owned a smartphone, that number had risen to 70%. Meanwhile, between 2007 and 2015, the number of emergency room visits for suicidal ideation and attempts doubled among children and adolescents.
Young girls have been particularly impacted. Between 2010 and 2018, self‐poisonings among 10‐ to 12‐year‐old girls quadrupled and hospital admissions for self‐harm tripled among 10‐ to 14‐year‐old girls.
Despite the strong correlation, determining the extent to which social media has directly caused these mental health changes remains difficult because many factors can affect mental health.
“It’s going to be a long shot to be able to pin the blame on social media when there’s a lot of other factors that can be in play,” Roberts said. Those other factors include genetics, financial stability, life experiences such as trauma or abuse, chronic stress, the presence of strong family and social support and access to health care.
A 2019 study by British researchers analyzed data from more than 350,000 adolescents and found that digital technology use was associated with lower psychological well-being, but the effect was small, accounting for less than 1% of the variation in adolescent life satisfaction.
“Taking the broader context of the data into account suggests that these effects are too small to warrant policy change,” the researchers concluded in the paper.
Another study found that while rising digital media use coincided with increases in adolescent suicidal behavior, digital media trends only accounted for a portion, about 20-40% of the increase, indicating that multiple factors were likely involved.
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It is also difficult to determine the directionality of mental health and social media use. Do teens turn to social media because they feel depressed and anxious, or does social media use exacerbate feelings of depression, loneliness and anxiety?
Some experimental research has demonstrated that social media use preceded mental health declines and other studies found that limiting social media in turn decreased feelings of loneliness and depression.
Despite dozens of studies examining social media use and youth mental health, some of the most consequential scientific and policy questions remain unresolved. While the research has yet to deliver definitive answers about causation and scope, few dispute that young people in the United States are experiencing significant mental health challenges.
In the months ahead, judges and juries will be asked to weigh not only the emerging science, but also whether and to what extent social media companies bear legal responsibility.