{"id":290970,"date":"2026-02-19T03:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T03:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/290970\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T03:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T03:19:08","slug":"can-you-really-be-addicted-to-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/290970\/","title":{"rendered":"Can You Really Be \u2018Addicted\u2019 to Social Media?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We know her only as Kaley\u2014and by the initials K.G.M. She began watching YouTube when she was 6 years old, started using Instagram at 11, then Snapchat at 13 and TikTok at 14. Social media \u201cchanged the course of her childhood,\u201d said her lawyer, Joseph VanZandt. Now 20, Kaley claims that a <a href=\"https:\/\/courthousenews.com\/social-media-giants-ask-judge-to-scroll-past-youth-mental-health-crisis\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">decade-long addiction<\/a> to social media led to her anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mayoclinic.org\/diseases-conditions\/body-dysmorphic-disorder\/symptoms-causes\/syc-20353938\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">body dysmorphia<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The allegations are at the heart of a huge trial that began <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.cand.401490\/gov.uscourts.cand.401490.2644.0.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">three weeks ago<\/a> in Los Angeles. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms, began testifying on Wednesday. When the testimony is over, jurors will be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/technology-and-innovation\/high-stakes-as-countrys-first-social-media-addiction-trial-nears-and-snap-settles\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">asked to resolve<\/a> whether Kaley\u2019s addiction was instigated by the content she viewed or by the way that content was delivered\u2014meaning the design elements of the social media platforms, such as infinite scroll, rapid feedback with \u201clikes,\u201d and autoplay, or queueing up videos in succession.<\/p>\n<p>The trial is widely seen as a <a href=\"https:\/\/clp.law.stanford.edu\/bellwether-trials\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">bellwether case<\/a> for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefp.com\/p\/is-social-media-the-new-big-tobacco\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a torrent<\/a> of litigation against TikTok, Meta\u2019s Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat, and Google\u2019s YouTube, including one case that has over 2,000 plaintiffs\u2014among them <a href=\"https:\/\/www.govinfo.gov\/app\/details\/USCOURTS-cand-4_22-md-03047\/USCOURTS-cand-4_22-md-03047-103\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">1,200 school districts<\/a>. The plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/nation\/landmark-trial-accusing-tech-giants-of-harming-children-with-addictive-social-media-begins\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">including Kaley\u2019s<\/a>, have compared \u201csocial media addiction\u201d to drug and gambling addictions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We know her only as Kaley\u2014and by the initials K.G.M. She began watching YouTube when she was 6&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[134,554,555,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-290970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}