Claims that Meta made its platforms addictive are now being tested in court. But what separates a bad scrolling habit from an addiction, and what can people do about it? As we mentioned earlier, the big question at the heart of the Meta lawsuit is whether the company designed its platforms in a way that risks addiction by young users.
And there is some debate about social media addiction. So we asked health correspondent Rhitu Chatterjee to explain it to us. SUMMERS: So, Rhitu, what's the answer?
Can you be addicted to social media? CHATTERJEE: Well, I put that question to Dr. He's the head of psychiatry at Rutgers Medical School, and here's what he said.
PETROS LEVOUNIS: There is a group of people, a small group of people, who already exhibit symptoms of addiction, constantly thinking about social media, spending a - tremendous amounts of time engaging with social media. CHATTERJEE: And other symptoms can include, you know, knowing that too much time on social media is unhealthy for you but not being able to cut back, or you cut back but have withdrawal symptoms. However, I should add that social media addiction is not an official diagnosis as defined by the American Psychiatric Association, at least not yet.
But pediatricians and child and adolescent specialists I've spoken with say they are seeing more and more young people with symptoms of social media addiction. CHATTERJEE: Rhitu, do we have a sense of what percentage of young people are affected? CHATTERJEE: So researchers are starting to get a better handle on this for youth in recent years from some large-scale studies.
I've interviewed several researchers who study social media use among young people, and one of them is pediatrician Dr. He's at the University of San Francisco. JASON NAGATA: Among even 11 to 12-year-olds, so these are preteenagers, a quarter say that they spend a lot of time thinking about their social media apps or planning use of social media apps.
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