Recent jury verdicts against Meta and YouTube confirmed what most parents — and pediatricians in our health systems and children’s hospitals — already know: social media platforms are hijacking the minds of our young people.
In March’s landmark decisions that could set a precedent for thousands of other pending lawsuits, civil juries in California and New Mexico found the two social media companies liable for harming children and adolescents with addictive products that exploit their young, developing brains.
As healthcare providers, we certainly embrace and applaud technological advances that have strengthened our ability to diagnose and treat disease — and benefited society in innumerable ways. But the emergence of smartphones and manipulative apps nearly two decades ago produced a nasty underbelly, leading to social isolation among teens, sleep deprivation that causes depression, anxiety, irritability, cognitive deficits, poor learning and lower grades, attention fragmentation from seemingly constant alerts, and a dopamine-like addiction to smartphones.
The “rewiring of childhood,” as NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt describes it in his best-selling 2024 book, “The Anxious Generation,” is leading countless youngsters away from play-based childhoods into an all-consuming digital landscape that shapes far too many of their social interactions.
As healthcare leaders, we see the victims in our psychiatric facilities, children’s hospitals, emergency rooms and primary care settings as youngsters struggle to gain confidence and self-esteem. According to our pediatric psychiatrists and others trying to keep our kids from harming themselves, social media addiction diminishes their critical thinking and coping skills, and reduces their ability to deal with and learn from challenges, disappointments and hardships.
The problem only gets worse when they head off to college. At Northwell Health, a mental health program for college students that we started in 2009 now treats more than 9,200 students from approximately 100 colleges and universities. The program was highlighted in 2024 by HBO Max in a two-hour documentary, “One South: Portrait of a Psych Unit.”
Those of us on the front lines of this youth mental health crisis — healthcare practitioners, educators and parents — have a special obligation and responsibility to demand that tech companies and the government take action.
The good news is that there is now broad acknowledgement that social media addiction is a major public health problem. Although Meta and YouTube’s parent Google is appealing the recent verdicts and punitive awards against them, there are about 2,000 other lawsuits filed by schools, state attorneys general and individual parents, many of whom lost children to suicide.
When it comes to government action, Congress is debating several legislative proposals targeting social media companies (including a bipartisan bill called “The Kids Off Social Media Act”). First amendment protections given to social media platforms and their content appear to be the biggest hurdle to reform. One of the few relevant federal laws on the books dates back to 1998, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits websites from collecting data on children under 13 without parental consent.
Other nations have been far more aggressive in pursuing solutions. In December, Australia became the world’s first country to ban social media access to children under age 16. Seventeen other nations have also either enacted or are pursuing legislation to put restrictions in place.
In the absence of federal action, at least 17 states, including New York, have approved laws limiting minors’ access to social media by requiring social media platforms to verify users’ age or obtain parental consent. New York’s law, for instance, also prohibits social media platforms from providing minors with addictive, personalized feeds, bans night-time notifications, and requires social media companies to report their content moderation policies.
In addition, 26 states have fully banned the use of cell phones in schools.
The social media lawsuits and the emerging public health movement in support of teens’ mental wellbeing are very similar to what we saw in the 1990s with the backlash against tobacco companies, which were accused of manipulative advertising aimed at minors and downplaying the health risk of smoking.
A 1998 settlement with five major American tobacco companies paid out more than $206 billion to 46 states over 25 years to cover smoking-related healthcare costs and anti-smoking public service campaigns. The result? Smoking rates among American adults dropped from 25.5 percent in 1990 to 9.9 percent in 2024, an all-time low.
I’m hoping we can achieve similar success with education and public awareness campaigns that deter children and teens from spending countless hours on their smartphones. But that’s not going to happen unless social media platforms are held accountable for their content.
At a time when AI is threatening to lure our kids even further away from reality and into the virtual world, we must act now to loosen social media’s grip on our young people.
Michael J. Dowling is CEO Emeritus of Northwell Health, the largest healthcare provider in the Northeast.
The post Michael Dowling: Time to hold social media platforms accountable for the youth mental health crisis appeared first on Becker's Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.
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