This message comes from Normal Gossip, a Radiotopia podcast. Join host Rachel Hampton as she shares juicy, strange, funny, and utterly banal gossip about people you'll never know and never meet. Subscribe to Normal Gossip wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, I'm going to pose an impossible question to you. It's totally not a yes or no question that I'm going to pose to you as a yes or no question. Is social media addictive? Yeah, so I would say it is a yes or no question. And some people feel very strongly yes, and some people feel very strongly no. And that's a problem. So I don't know about all of you listening, but sometimes I am scrolling through social media, and I lose track of time, and suddenly I'm watching a rug cleaning video at 3 o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday. Some of you might call this kind of experience quote-unquote addictive and bad for your mental health. And you wouldn't be alone. In fact, you'd relate to more than a thousand individual plaintiffs who are taking social media companies to court over the addictiveness and mental health impacts of their platforms. These court cases are the tip of a user-led backlash against social media. Is social media bad for your health? A jury will eventually decide, but today I want to explore that question with a tech correspondent and an addiction expert who can help us tease out what addiction is. And when does a social media norm cross the line from personal habit into personal pathology? Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. NPR correspondent Shannon Bond, welcome back to It's Been a Minute. Hi, Brittany. Great to be here. Okay. So Shannon, you cover a lot of tech for NPR. Off the jump, Are you willing to admit if you are or are not addicted to social media? Well, I'll tell you a story that illustrates this, which is that my nine-year-old said, Mom, you have to delete Instagram from your phone. You were on it too much. And I did. And like, I don't keep it on my phone. I'm not using it regularly. And I regret to inform you. I feel like I'm probably sleeping better, less distracted. Jeez, oh, Pete. Wow, they really meant it when they said kids are a mirror. I didn't know it was like that. I didn't know it was like that. He's like, Mom, I see you. I see you and you need to get it off your phone. And he was not wrong. Oh, my gosh. Well, the trial that's happening in Los Angeles right now gets to the heart of the matter. A jury is going to have to tease out whether or not tech companies intentionally built their platforms to hook young users and keep them on the platforms and whether or not that in turn caused harm to young people. And this is just the first of several cases that will make their way through the courts in the coming months and years. What is the through line connecting these cases? So number one, they are saying companies like Meta, right, which makes Instagram and Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, have intentionally designed their apps to be addictive, to be really hard to put down. So things like infinite scroll, those constant notifications you get, like the way the algorithm works. So number one, they're saying the companies have done this intentionally. They want to keep you using them as much as possible. And then they're sort of saying as a second step, that overuse that these apps have encouraged among kids, is contributing to a mental health crisis. We've been talking a lot in recent years about a mental health crisis among kids. The plaintiffs are claiming that because of excessive use of these apps, it's causing things like anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and like I said, in some cases, really, really tragic outcomes. Okay, so of course there's obvious things to point at that definitely feel addictive. Like you pointed out Infinite Scroll, autoplay videos, frequent notifications and recommendation algorithms. What else do the plaintiffs allege against platforms like Meta, YouTube, Snapchat, etc.? Well, what they're saying is that it's not just that this company sort of disregarded the potential harms. They're saying these companies knew about these harms and made these products anyway, included these features anyway. They're saying essentially they were prioritizing their profits over the safety of children. And that is an argument that the plaintiffs are very explicit. They are saying this is like the tobacco companies. You know, you had this research, you knew these were problems, and you hid that from the public, and you continue to push this product out. And to make that argument, the plaintiffs are relying on a ton of internal documents that they've gotten in this legal process from the company. So studies that the companies have done about the way kids use their apps, you know, marketing research, all kinds of internal communications that in many cases, you know, when you sort of when you're looking at the pieces that have shown up in these court documents, you know, Some of the stuff does look pretty damning. You have the companies talking about parts of products, you know, working like slot machines or, you know, really wanting to keep kids using it more and more. Now, the companies say this is being taken out of context, that they're, you know, cherry picking quotes here. But look, we know how tech companies work, right? They need users. They constantly need like a new influx of people using them. People get older. It's how they make money. It's how they make money. I mean, for their part, the companies are pushing back. Meta, for example, says that, quote, these lawsuits misportray our company. We stand by our record of putting teen safety first and we'll keep making improvements, end quote. Yeah, I mean, pretty obviously they dispute these allegations, right? They point to the safety measures they've already put in place for kids. But they also make this larger argument. They say this idea around addiction, they really contest that. They say there is not a clinical diagnosis of addiction to social media. There isn't scientific evidence to prove that using social media affects your brain the same way that an addictive drug would. They also argue that there is not enough evidence to prove that the overuse of social media in these cases is what led to the mental health harms that the plaintiffs are claiming That a lot to take in I know you see parallels between this moment with social media and the big tobacco lawsuits from the 90s. How are they alike and how are they different? There are lots of differences, right, between, you know, a cigarette and a social media app. You know, I would argue that there's probably very little benefit. You could argue it all about cigarettes. You know, social media is more complicated. And I think that's one of the things that really is going to be interesting to see how the jury reacts to these cases. Because, like, look, I think there's no denying there could be really negative consequences of overuse of social media. But, you know, the science isn't really clear that that is sort of a one size fits all outcome. There's lots of beneficial aspects of kids using social media. You know, there's connection to friends. There's connection to communities, especially for kids who might be feeling isolated or being able to reach out to other people. So I think there's some differences there. But in terms of this kind of moment of scrutiny of saying, you know, do we trust these companies? Do we trust them the way, you know, what they know about their products and then sort of the public face they're putting on them? I think that's sort of where the parallel is most clear. Well, Shannon, thank you so much. This has been extremely informative and I'm anxious to see how this unfolds. Thanks for having me. That was NPR correspondent Shannon Bond. So a jury will decide who will ultimately police social media. Will it be up to the social media company to police themselves? Or will the law intervene to regulate how and what a social media company can do to keep its users engaged? But, and this is the big but, that doesn't really answer the more philosophical question of whether or not social media itself is quote unquote addictive. And that question gets at the heart of how we define and understand what addiction is in this country. From tobacco all the way to your algorithm. So coming up, I'm going to try to answer that question for you. For a long time, we've been working with these sort of messy, conflictual, outdated theories and definitions of addiction. and that really comes to the fore in something as complicated and multifactorial as social media problems or internet problems. After a quick break. I met this guy on the bar train one time and I had my bass with me and he goes, man, what do you want to do? What's your dream? I'm Jesse Thorn on Bullseye Rafael Sadiq. He's nominated for an Oscar. He played bass for Prince. And of course, he co-founded Tony, Tony, Tony. And I go, I want to be in a band with my brother. That's on the next Bullseye. Find us in the NPR app at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get podcasts. I'm here with Carl Eric Fisher, addiction psychiatrist and author of the book, The Urge, Our History of Addiction. Okay, I'm going to pose an impossible question to you. It's a totally not a yes or no question that I'm going to pose to you as a yes or no question. Is social media addictive? Yeah, so I would say it is a yes or no question. And some people feel very strongly yes, and some people feel very strongly no. And that's a problem. And for me, as someone who looks at the field overall, it's interesting because it really just mirrors a bigger problem in the field of addiction. For a long time, we've been working with these sort of messy, conflictual, outdated theories and definitions of addiction. and that really comes to the fore in something as complicated and multifactorial as social media problems or internet problems in general. So I am trying to dodge your question the way you maybe anticipated. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, to follow up. Yeah. Well, it really does depend on what you mean by addiction and what you mean by addictive. And one of my big concerns regarding drugs, regarding other types of behavioral problems, is that we focus too much on the supposed addictiveness of a substance or a stimulus out there as if it's a demon that comes in and addicts us. So I have a natural aversion to resorting to that kind of like addictive language. There are obviously examples where it makes sense, like the nicotine and tobacco and other drugs that have strong biological effects. There are some addiction medicine doctors who say, yeah, of course, heroin is stronger than broccoli. Otherwise, we would have a lot of broccoli addiction, not to make too light of something that's such a devastating problem. But especially in the case of social media, we see how it's not just all biology. It's not like there's some demon drug that goes into your head and hijacks you. And in fact, that probably is not even a good metaphor to use for addictions writ large. Okay, so I ask because I guess I'm being honest here, like I reach for my phone automatically in almost every situation. When I first wake up, when I'm bored, when I'm stressed, or even when I, I don't know, want to connect with someone or make a post for work. It's so ingrained in my brain and in my hands. It's like an overwhelming physical and psychological urge. It feels like an addiction. I'm not like this about anything else in my life. Is this a fair description of my experience? And if not, what's a better way to describe what I'm experiencing? Yeah, I think you're pointing towards something really important. It's natural that people would use addiction language in situations like that, and in fact, have done for hundreds and hundreds of years. I don't like to gatekeep around the word addiction, even though I work with people with severe addiction and I'm in addiction recovery myself. There's a definition of addiction that actually predates modern medicine and we still use naturally. That's something like a voluntary choice that saps the will, a voluntary devotion that then takes away your capacity to exert the will. Like basically the impulse to pick up my phone and check social media before I would even consciously be able to apply will in that situation Right But you only got there because you been using your phone and you been using it in a certain way in certain contexts for a long period of time So I think you can apply that definition to a huge range of human behavior. It's not necessarily medical. Although in the farthest extremes of maybe this is clear in the more obvious addictions, gambling addiction, the more extreme cases of sex addiction, and then of course, the substance addictions, people can really feel completely and totally compelled. But it's really on a diminished spectrum, the whole way. Something that we miss about the phenomenon of addiction that personally, and through my work, I found it more useful to think of addiction as universal. It's a latent possibility in all human beings. And it gets activated under certain patterns of activity in certain contexts. And we kind of get stuck into a binary view, which is both misleading and harmful, where we say, oh, you're either addicted or you're perfectly normal. In 2026, nobody feels normal about the internet. I think you're absolutely right about that. I don't know a person who feels normal about the internet in 2026. Okay, so you brought up a couple different types of addiction. And it seems that social media falls under one of these categories. So I want to understand the difference before we go any further between behavioral addiction, or like substance based addictions. How would you describe it? Yeah, I would start by saying the supposed distinction between behavior and substance addictions is maybe not as big as we think. And this is where the culture starts to come in. Because of a legacy of oppressive criminalization in the United States, especially, and because of some really sort of nasty and stigmatized narratives about drugs, we've invested substances with special powers as if they are the main thing driving addiction. That's a relatively recent socio-historical phenomenon. Like nowadays in official modern medicine, there's a very strong distinction between substance addictions, alcohol, tobacco, etc. And then behavioral addictions. And the only one that's really strongly recognized by the medical authorities like psychiatric organizations and the WHO is gambling addiction. But, you know, there's some addiction theorists who say, all addiction is a behavioral addiction, because if I drink alcohol, I have to do the behavior of drinking the alcohol. Right, right. And like any other sort of like, behavior or habit, there's like usually cues or there's context that, that puts you in the position to perform that behavior. Okay, so when I spoke earlier to one of my wonderful colleagues at NPR, Shannon Bond, she mentioned that social media companies argue that there isn't a clinical diagnosis for social media addiction? There are a lot of people studying it. In some ways, there's almost more research in Europe. The Germans in particular are very big on social network use disorder. Right, I'm reading here that SNUD, social network use disorder, is essentially referring to problematic social media use. There's a few other labs here and there that are studying it, but they haven't really reached consensus on how to characterize what social media addiction means in a clinical definition. I'm more of a bioethicist and a theorist, and my focus is more on just the core concept, like how can we clean up the core conceptualization of addiction? And I think the problem with social media is precisely that the old models of addiction don't quite apply. If you apply a different model that says everybody lives on the spectrum of diminished control somewhere, then it makes more sense because most people would say casually, I think, oh, I feel so addicted to my phone or I feel so addicted to like streaming or everyone's got something. But very, very few people are going to a formal treatment center for it. Very, very few people are going to a 12-step group. All those exist. You know, they're 12-step recovery organizations for video game problems or 12-step groups. There was a Bloggers Anonymous back in the earlier days of the internet. You know, So there are many, many 12-step groups. Addicted to blogging? Addicted to blogging. People who thought that they spent too much time, they couldn't get off WordPress. Okay, so if there's not really like a clinical diagnosis for this, I feel like there's not nothing going on. Like what's happening to my brain when I'm doom scrolling or even when I'm just cycling through the same social media apps on my phone over and over? There's a saying in addiction psychotherapy that behaviors make sense. And I think this is really useful, both for getting a handle on what the problem is. I hadn't heard that one. Yeah, I like it. Behaviors make sense. I have therapy today, so I'm like, okay. Oh, good. I'm bringing that, okay. Yeah, because the rational analytic part of our mind is often telling us, oh, it doesn't make sense. You shouldn't do that. Should, should, should, should, should. But in any sort of habitual problematic behavior, if I'm going to put a very neutral descriptive term on it. People are seeking something, consciously, unconsciously. And behaviors make sense in the sense of, say, substance use problems, where there can be many different functions that people are trying to fulfill with alcohol use, right? Like some people do it to feel better because they feel pain, but some people do it to fit in. Some people do it to feel good because they have trouble accessing joy or pleasure. We could apply a similar kind of principle to doom scrolling. Like everyone, I think, has a sense of what doom scrolling might mean. It's the person sitting in the corner on the couch, hunched over their phone, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. But for one person, that could be more about pursuing reward, right? That could be more about pursuing novelty. Maybe that's how they get comedy. Maybe they want like a little jolt of levity. And on their discover feed, there's a lot of stand up. And they're just searching for the thing that's going to make them chuckle and smile. But for somebody else, it could be about stress and fatigue and just trying to check out those could be told to totally different psychological functions. You know for a lot of people like myself social media is totally knitted into the fabric of our lives Like it how we get invitations to birthday parties or public service announcements about inclement weather from Mayor Momdani office Dates are organized through social media jobs career opportunities etc How do we manage that personally And also are there interventions that might help us manage that systemically? Yeah, I'll start with the personal because even if a lot of these factors devolve to the systemic, I do think there are things that we can do. Here's a specific example that comes from a different line of research, from video game research. So people have started to piece apart what are the technological design features that make video games potentially addictive, in the words of these users. There are a lot of things that are similar to social media. There are things like the reward schedule and monetization, the social tie-ins to it. But one really important thing, which is very basic, is access. Just how frictionless is it to be able to use this game or this platform? And when something is available across multiple platforms, if it's on your phone, but it's also on your iPad, and it's also on your gaming console, and it's also on your PC, then problems spike. You know, this is not rocket science. This is relatively straightforward. But it illustrates the notion that we don't have to be stuck into an all or nothing binary like, do you have social media? Or don't you have social media? People can install, say, a launch delay where it's an app that makes you pause and take a few mindful breaths before you use the device or maybe set time limits or maybe some people have even dedicated a specific old phone to social media. I've seen this problem in folks who have to use social media or other apps for their work. And they say, like, I'm an entrepreneur. I need to be on social media. Otherwise, I can't get clients or I can't do what I need to do. well okay well use the last phone that you were using before the upgrade and have that be the one that has instagram on it keep it in the closet and take it out when you need to do the post for your thing i mean i need actually i'm like fighting i need to buy a new phone and i'm like you just you said something yeah so now i've said something with that that was good i've enabled the uh thousand dollar purchase on the upgrade whoops um but as you were saying like that's a strategy that people might use? Yeah, so friction. Friction is one thing that we can do. Paying really close attention to the intention is very useful. You know, this is a core, core principle in people who struggle with their use. We ask, what is this doing for me right now? How does this behavior make sense? So when you're reaching for your phone, and you have that tickle in the back of your head that says, this is not necessarily serving me, or I'm not really sure that this is going in a good place, you know, an hour from now, I'll be feeling bad about it, rather than going to like a shame strategy that says, no, no, no, don't do this, don't do this, you could ask like, you know, what am I really looking for here? And sometimes, the phone might be the right solution, right? But if it's not, if it's that, oh, I'm exhausted, I just want to lie down and take a nap, or I feel lonely, maybe I need to call and reach out to a friend. These are two drastically different strategies. But I think with that kind of psychological granularity, it can start to point toward the solution that is really helpful, is really nourishing. Okay, so these are really helpful on the individual level. But I'm wondering about systemic interventions. What about those? What would that even look like? That is the real question, right? Is what would that even look like? Yeah. Because, for example, some people have proposed there could be some sort of algorithm level regulation. You know, some jurisdictions have banned social media use for children under a certain age and so forth and so on. But I do think, again, that we tend to get stuck, especially when we're talking about topics related to diminished control and addiction, in this binary where we think it's all or nothing. This is especially true in the States where we've allowed a lot of industries that sell potentially harmful products to run roughshod, where we think any regulation is like tipping over into the binary. And we can't have that. We have to have more of a libertarian approach to these things. In gambling, for example, there's some good examples where other jurisdictions, primarily in Europe, have selectively enforced restrictions on certain types of gambling. They haven't outlawed app-based or phone-based gambling entirely, but they do say in-game betting is particularly troublesome for problematic gamblers. That's the kind of betting where once a sports game is up and going, they induce people to chase their losses and they say, oh, tough luck that you just lost that bet. but you know bet now about how many points this person will score by halftime and then it kind of gets people in the action and keeps them chasing well you can regulate who endorses certain products so regarding gambling there are some celebrities like you can't have the actual footballer endorsing the betting app in certain places you know so i i think that the first step i certainly don't have a policy roadmap. But if control is diminished, if we're all on a spectrum of diminished control, then what is the spectrum of different nudges, or partway solutions that we could do to increase friction, to maybe decrease the powerful asymmetries of data and personalization and targeting? That's a really complicated battle. But otherwise, what do we have? What do we have otherwise? Well, Carl, I really appreciate this conversation. I have been feeling doom and gloom about my phone and social media addiction. But you gave me a lot of good ways to think about this today. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure. Yeah. Don't be in doom and gloom. Change is possible. That was Carl Eric Fisher, addiction psychiatrist and author of the book, The Urge, Our History of Addiction. This episode of It's Been a Minute was produced by Corey Antonio Rose. This episode was edited by Nina Potok. Our supervising producer is Barton Girdwood. Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sanguini. All right. That's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Luce. Talk soon.
