I 100% agree with the premise that TikTok is addictive and even dangerous to consume in large amounts (that's why I don't consume it at all).
But I feel the exact same about cheeseburgers. Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?
Again, I get the danger here, and I don't like TikTok as a whole. I just don't really know where the line is between something that the parent is allowing kids to do (like spending a billion hours on TikTok), versus something they have no control over (like a company badly constructing a car seat, or similar).
> But I feel the exact same about cheeseburgers.
The problem with analogies to things like cheeseburgers, gambling, drugs, cigarettes, etc., is:
1. Availability -- you have to go somewhere to acquire/participate in these things*
2. Cost -- you have to have money to spend. That is, it's not something you can consume/participate in for free -- you have to have money to spend.
* Gambling is theoretically freely available via gambling apps. But still comes at a cost.
With social media, anybody can do it for unlimited amounts of time, and for free. All you need is a phone/laptop/desktop with internet access -- which nearly every person on the planet has.
Addiction + Free + Widely available = Destruction
To your points I would add the following difference between TikTok on the one hand and cheeseburgers, drugs, cigarettes, etc. on the other.
3. Targeting -- even under the (debatable) premise that they are intentionally designed to be addictive, cheeseburgers, drugs and cigarettes do not actively target each addict by optimising their properties to their individual addiction.
If I am addicted to smoking, the tobacco industry does indeed try to keep me hooked, among other things by offering me many flavours and alternatives. However, the cigarettes I personally consume are not constantly adjusting their formula, appearance and packet design specifically to satisfy my tastes and desires.
Yes. Target the algorithms, not the method of delivery. Hacker news also counts as social media, but here we all are seeing the same feed on the same site with minimal (if not zero) tracking to try and extract info from the audience.
Even a first step of requiring transparency in the algorithms would quickly shatter this stronghold on people's minds.
Indeed. In fact, you may notice I explicitly left out gambling from the list of 'non targeted' addictions. The reason for that is that the delivery methods for gambling cover the whole gamut from zero to fully personalised targeting, and I didn't want that to distract from the point.
case in point: lots of places have lots of restrictions (either through legislation or just industry norms, usually a combination of both) about advertising for alcohol or tobacco.
And those efforts seem effective to me, at least anecdotally. I don't feel particularly bad about those restrictions either.
nooo those restrictions aren't perfect. And if it's not perfect then it needs to be abolished! /s
Don't forget the most important part. Attempting to opt-out means social exclusion for a vast majority of the population.
So what you're saying is that we should ban porn then?
No, they saying it (and other things) should be regulated (it is)
To add, McDonalds is required to list calories and nutritional information. There are various agencies and regulations guarding us from them selling us rat meat instead of cow. Education on “junk food” is widespread and has (had…) widespread government education programs.
There is a great deal of information given to parents on what is in McDonalds.
I would say that most parents, not those on a tech site, have no idea how tiktok works, what studies have shown about it or its dangers.
I agree, there's plenty of information out there and nutrition is often taught in schools.
Additionally, other content like TV and movies has content ratings, social media does not have anything of the sort.
Food and nutritional science is something many of us know (to a degree) and has been taught often in high schools. That is partly why you know that cheeseburgers aren't great for you, because you know they're highly processed, high in salt and high in fat and that's written on the label.
But the knowledge of the harmful impacts of social media aren't as abundant, nor are they identified or classified.
McDonalds are required to list the nutritional information of what you're consuming. TV shows and movies have content ratings to know what you're going to be consuming. Social media like Tiktok does not have any form of rating to know what you're consuming or going to consume.
There is a lot of less rigour on short from content like Tiktok, in comparison with McDonalds.
I think the line is the same as vapes/cigarettes. It's less about the product itself and more how its advertised and marketed. Internal memos from Meta are pretty damning in that they know they're actively harming kids and not adjusting their product for harm reduction. I imagine TikTok has the same problem, prompting them to settle out early.
Yes, you should be able to recover damages from McDonald's if they made their food addictive on purpose.
You're getting some mild heat in sibling comments here. Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation goes into a lot of detail on this exact point about parental responsibility.
There are others that touch on personal vs. societal responsibility too and the difficulties with parental/personal moderation and change (Stolen Focus by Johann Hari and Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke off the top of my head).
There is an enormous amount of nuance that goes into answering your questions and addressing your assumptions that HN is probably not a great medium for, if you're serious about understanding the answers.
> Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?
If McDonald’s is handing them out for free at the playground, yes.
I hate that this needs to be said, but giving kids free food is not illegal.
If the food contains heroin, it's illegal. There's a line somewhere.
This requires many asterisks, as once you hit any appreciable size of "giving out food" you tend to hit tons of local ordinance about food safety, permits, and just general distrust of directly interacting with other people's kids at a playground (depending on the age we are talking about, but since we said playground, I'm assuming pretty young).
To add, littl children have been arrested for having lemonade stands in the USA before.
You don't need all the asterisks if you don't stretch the metaphor beyond its breaking point.
I'm not stretching it at all. The context was McDonalds, and the added context was giving food to children at a playground. I'm completely bounded on that context.
If you believe that, go set up a "Free Candy!" stand at a local playground and see how long before the police show up.
My personal vice is junk food. I wish they banned junk food. I'm not sure how the law would work but it would be objectively better for me as a human if they did.
(This is completely disregarding how practical such a ban would be)
A power law formula tax based on sugar/sat fat/total carbs per mass of food/drink should do the trick.
Or give everyone cheap daily GLP-1 pills.
Rest in piece literally every food in existence that isn't just a slab of meat.
The evidence doesn’t seem to support your claim that cheeseburgers are as addicting as social media.
Maybe if you had picked gambling or alcohol…
That has nothing to do with the point being made. The point was about to what level parents are responsible for things they allow their kids to do, regardless of how "addictive" it is. Particularly if they know it's harmful.
Your kids are (and should be) doing all kinds of things you have no idea about. It’s part of becoming an adult. I’m sure you modeled all the right behaviors, and provided every advantage you could. That helps, but you’re influence is waning and their friends influence is building and it’s all manipulated by the thousands of PhD’s working for TikTok and the other social media companies. You’re outgunned.
I think you might be underestimating the level of control that an average parent, especially a working parent, has over a teenage kid. Short of taking away devices, it's tough, especially if they're going through a phase of doing precisely the opposite of what you recommend / demand.
I'm not saying that parents don't have any responsibility, but it's about practicalities. If a teenager can easily buy smokes or alcohol, many will, no matter what the parents say. If you make the goods harder to buy, usage drops. So, shops / software vendors do have some responsibility for societal outcomes.
In a libertarian utopia, anything goes, but kids are... weird in that they often try to push the boundaries of their autonomy without always knowing the risk, and it's in our collective best interest not to let them go too far.
> kids are... weird in that they often try to push the boundaries of their autonomy without always knowing the risk
I'd argue most adults are just oversized kids in a trenchcoat
*all
Regardless of how addictive it is? So the same argument applies to heroin? Shoukd heroin be legalized and allowed to be sold outside of schools?
If my kid gets addicted to fent I will get in shit, regardless that Purdue Pharma was found guilty. Point is Purdue Pharma is guilty for hooking people on an addicting substance.
I have doubts most overconsumers of fast food are just getting burgers... like effectively nobody. Is it more likely that people damage themselves with cheeseburgers or the soda that comes with them?
I tried to eat as many cheeseburgers as I could in one sitting (I easily eat double the amount of food of others in one sitting normally), and tapped out at 10 or something, which is impractical and gross, there's a physical limit unless you have certain conditions
If you only go to fast food once a week or less with your kid as a treat, I feel like you could probably exclude soda and fries and tell them to get as many burgers as they want, but they have to eat them all, and it would be more of a lesson than anything lol
>Should I be able to sue McDonald's if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?
If RJ Reynolds was handing out free cigarettes to children, even though the parent either consented to this or simply didn't know about it, would you consider RJ Reynolds' responsible for the adverse effects of children smoking?
If it was legal to hand out cigarettes to children and the parents consented I don't see how the company could be held liable. The state should not be doing the job of parents, and the judicial branch should not being doing the job of the legislative branch.
That seems like circular logic.
You're saying parental responsibility should govern because TikTok is legal, while cigarettes require state intervention because they're illegal. But they are only illegal because we made them illegal (for minors). And isn't that exactly what is being discussed here?
For the sake of consistency, do you think cigarettes should be legal for minors if they have parental consent? If not, what is the distinction between TikTok and cigarettes that causes you to think the government should be involved in one but not the other?
The difference between social media and cheeseburgers here is that I don't NEED to physically go to McDonald's to find out if a business is closed or learn more about their work. (The number of businesses that only post operational updates, specials or samples of their work on Instagram is staggering. Google Maps isn't trustworthy; websites DEFINITELY aren't trustworthy either.)
> Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?
There are other options for addressing social problems besides lawsuits. Other rich places in this world are not nearly as fat as us. I suspect environments also matter for social media addiction. We should investigate why!
It's actually because they have more lawsuits and more severe lawsuits, leading companies to be afraid of breaking the law so they don't, and then lawsuits decrease.
Lawsuits are the one official mechanism for righting wrongs. They're the only mechanism that the perpetrator of a wrong can't just choose to ignore.
> I just don't really know where the line
It is developed to be as addictive like a drug, but it’s not even fun. Just stupid mind numbing content.gambling does the same thing, and many jurisdictions have outlawed it for minors.
it was sold so israel could have more control over the narratives visible. nothing to do with any real safety concerns
> Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?
Should you be able to sue a liquor store if they sell your kid a fifth of vodka?
The US has executed people in international waters over the claim of fentanyl being trafficked into the country. Is Insta and TikTok as addictive as fentanyl? If so, does it warrant a similar response? I think a cheeseburger is not an equivalent analogy. Singapore also executes drug traffickers, for what it’s worth.
https://www.techpolicy.press/is-tiktok-digital-fentanyl/
https://www.foxnews.com/media/tiktok-is-chinas-digital-fenta...
> Certainly, some regard social media generally as addictive, and reckon TikTok is a particularly potent format. Anna Lembke, Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, and author of the book Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance In The Age of Abundance, referred to Tiktok as a "potent and addictive digital drug":
> I can’t speak to the surveillance piece mentioned in the article, but I can attest to the addictive nature of TikTok and other similar digital media. The human brain is wired to pay attention to novelty. One of the ways our brain gets us to pay attention to novel stimuli is by releasing dopamine, a reward neurotransmitter, in a part of the brain called the reward pathway. What TikTok does is combine a moving image, already highly reinforcing to the human brain, with the novelty of a very short video clip, to create a potent and addictive digital drug.
I'm trying to read this with the best of intentions, but you're saying you really can not tell the difference social media and a cheeseburger in terms of access, addiction, and damage?
Cheeseburgers are everywhere, are addictive to some, and eventually eating enough will kill you.
Put another way: If McDonalds sees I eat 5 cheeseburgers a day, at what point do they have to stop serving me for my own health? Do they need to step in at all?
If Facebook knows I'm scrolling 6 hours a day, at what point do they have to stop serving me?
Cheeseburgers are not everywhere. I'm sitting at my desk, social media is here but cheeseburgers are not. Social media is always with me other than in the shower. Cheeseburgers are not.
I can get a cheeseburger delivered, or there's a dozen places within a 15 minute walk to get one. I can hardly leave the house without seeing an ad for one or some other fast food item on the side of a bus. I can't avoid being hungry, but I can leave my phone at home.
Sure it's a matter of degrees but I don't see a bright line between McDonald's and tiktok. Both want me hooked on their product. Both have harmful aspects. Both have customers they know are over-indulging. Why would only tiktok be liable for that?
If people never felt full from food, food was always instantly available in your pocket, and food costed no money to obtain, I believe McDonalds and TikTok would be very equivalent. Likely McDonalds would even be far worse since people would probably be dying to it daily.
That's the bright line. The lack of any barrier to entry.
If I had to walk for 15 minutes or pay a hefty delivery fee to access social media, my usage would be massively lower. If there was a cheeseburger in my hand all day every day I would be a lot fatter.
> Put another way: If McDonalds sees I eat 5 cheeseburgers a day, at what point do they have to stop serving me for my own health? Do they need to step in at all?
Is McDonald's adjusting the flavour and ingredients of each cheeseburger it serves you with the express purpose of encouraging you to order the next one as soon as possible?
They are constantly evolving the menu and it's entirely data-driven, so yes? It's not down to the person level like tiktok but if they could, it would be.
So compared to TikTok and algorithms the answer is no then? If they could I agree they would, but they can't target food on the same level that TikTok does.
How is the cheeseburger that you receive differently tailored to your own addiction than the cheeseburger that the following customer will receive is to theirs?
A bar has a legal responsibility to stop serving people at some point, so this obligation is not unheard of.
Yes, of course I understand the addictive difference. The point I'm making is: does parental decision making have any bearing on this, or can they knowingly allow their child to do something harmful and then sue because it turned out poorly.
How would you feel if some weird random strangers set up a free cookie hut outside the elementary school? Any kid can get as much free candy and cookies as they want as long as they go inside and don’t tell any adults.
I would say if the companies providing the service do so knowing it is harmful and cover that up then yes they can sue.
> can they knowingly allow their child to do something harmful and then sue because it turned out poorly
That likely depends on how that "something" was publicly marketed to both parents and children based on the company's available information. Our laws historically regulate substances (and their delivery mechanisms) which may lead to addition or are very easy to misuse in a way which leads to permanent harm (see: virtually all mind-altering substances); even nicotine gum is age-restricted like tobacco products. Because nicotine is generally considered an addictive substance, it's regulated, but few reasonable people would argue that parents should be allowed to buy their children nicotine gum so their kids calm down.
Consider how, decades ago, the tobacco companies were implicated in suppressing research demonstrating that tobacco products are harmful to human health. The key here will be if ByteDance has done the same thing.
Also, to play off your point on cheeseburgers: remember the nutritional quality of one cheeseburger versus another will vary. If made with top-quality ingredients (minimally-processed ingredients, organic vegetables, grass-fed beef, etc.), a cheeseburger is actually quite nutritious. However, in a hypothetical situation where a fast-food chain was making false public claims about the composition of their cheeseburgers (e.g., lying about gluten-free buns or organic ingredient status), and someone is harmed as a consequence, the victim might have standing to sue the fast food chain.
I think we would all agree that parents bear a lot of responsibility here. Also, if I think if we look at how we treat kids in other parts of society it's very clear it's a good thing when highly addictive things are kept away from them. It's a good thing cigarette companies can't advertise to children. It's a good thing serving children alcohol or allowing them to buy weed is illegal. And now that we have this new poison, the law hasn't quite caught up yet, but this is a poison, and it's being fed to children with a ferocity and sophistication that only modern technology can provide. A kid can't make a hamburger in their bedroom. They can sneak a phone in and use it. I think it's both. I shout from the roof tops to every parent who will listen to not buy their kid a smart phone. I also think we should hold companies accountable when the knowingly get children addicted to poison.
Tech companies know exactly what they are doing. They deliberately sell crack to kids- some of the people who make money from it are here on HN so good luck with getting any honest discussion.
"Again, I get the danger here..."
Haha, wtf. You don't.
The elephant in the room of all of this is that TikTok was the social media platform that allowed for the genocide taking place in Palestine by Israel to reach audiences directly. All other major social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) heavily censored this information or outright deplatformed and canceled accounts of prominent dissemination of information about the war crimes being committed by Israelis.
TikTok, outside of the US and Zionist-controlled sphere of influence, remained the one place for this information to be available widely far beyond what was possible on other platforms.
All the other platforms have the same concepts of algorithms and targeting and bubbles. TikTok was uniquely not under Western control, and thus, needed to be pressured to conform.
The significant shift in young people's opinions about Israel in recent years is heavily attributed to the unfiltered information about their ongoing genocide against the Palestinians that they could uniquely see on TikTok and must not be understated, especially in light of all the major shifts in news, media, and social media over the past few years as they grapple with the fallout of losing the narrative.
I don't deny that social media as a whole has many harms and negatives, but there's no action like this being taken against Meta, Google, or Twitter despite the exact same harms present, sometimes even more so, on their platforms. They're already in the same overall group that supports the narrative and have done so by self-censoring their platforms accordingly. TikTok didn't play ball and got trampled.
This case reads like a single individual suing these companies
What is to stop other individuals from filing the same suit and expecting similar outcomes?
It is a bellwether trial, a test of sorts combining hundreds of similar cases. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellwether_trial
This is the first of many lawsuits that was exactly the same.
Not much.
Class action suites suffer immensely from bad actors freeloading on the backs of people actually harmed. I have a friend who practices law in the area on some pretty high profile medical cases, it's a chronic problem trying to weed out people who were affected from people who shamelessly want money. Basically people playing victim to steal from actual victims, and even worse, the side doing the weeding is the side who originated the harm.
I hope nothing. Maybe if enough people rightfully sue, then these companies will be forced into going out of business since we can't put the executives away for the crimes.
That sounds like an excellent outcome. Also, I don't think executives should go to jail for something like this. Commercial social media going out of business and their executives paying enourmous fines is the best that could happen for the world IMO, but it is also extremely unlikely.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where settlement money would not dissuade them from taking their case forward. I know that's the world of unicorns and rainbows though, and definitely not the world we live in.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where civil lawsuits were not the only way to gain any recompense from companies greed, as well.
The law protects companies but rarely binds them, and the law binds citizens but rarely protects them. This is the only recourse, in our land where wealth and power mean more than the rule of law.
Why is TikTok always singled out in these social media addiction lawsuits? Instagram and YouTube are just as guilty, if not more so.
Tiktok, Instagram and I think Facebook are getting sued this time.
TikTok's algorithm is significantly better and therefore more addictive. I'm speaking from personal experience, having spent about 12-14 hours a day on TikTok for probably 360 days during 2024. Getting banned from it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Too bad it only happened in Jan 2025. Will never get that year back, or the mental health I lost from it. (I'm not going to sue, though I could definitely win such a suit.)
> having spent about 12-14 hours a day on TikTok for probably 360 days during 2024
That's a mind blowing statistic, and I'm sure this is much more common than we think.
This is why I hope we wake up and realize that social media is going to be the ruin of our society. I hope this trial is the beginning of the end of social media platforms that prey on addictive behaviors.
Sometimes when I notice friends drop off from attending things or talking in group chats, if it's because they have fallen in some pit of social media / internet addiction. I agree it's probably more common than we think because the people who have fallen in to this state are the least visible.
"I'm speaking from personal experience, having spent about 12-14 hours a day on TikTok for probably 360 days during 2024"
My jaw is on the floor... Can you provide details of your usage, were you just going through video after video for 12-14 hours or were you involved in content production or something?
Scrolling videos, commenting, expanding my algorithm by searching for similar stuff to what I liked, sometimes watching lives, sometimes hosting lives or joining lives. Maybe about 70% scrolling videos and 28% lives and 2% creating.
I should mention that I was very financially successful due to TikTok. Around Christmas of 2023, my book got over 20M views and shot up to #122 on all Amazon books, until KDP just stopped offering it within a few hours. I wonder how high it would have gone.
But due to that success, I lost both drive and purpose. I had already made it, and it wasn't clear what else I could offer the world. So while I thought about it, I scrolled to pass the time. But that scrolling was endless and addictive. And I never made any progress on figuring out the question of what I'm good for.
Those are not crazy numbers for unemployed people. If you want a real shocker: TikTok is EXTREMELY popular amongst 60+ men, consuming stuff like teenagers plus super naive...
Just check out hospitals or elderly shelter thing.
You can get banned from TikTok ? That's horrible, how ? Can you provide detailed instructions please?
This is wild, what were the effects like for you? I imagine your eyes and hands would start to see physical effects from that level of use for such a consistent time.
What sort of social changes did you notice after that period of time?
I've never used TikTok, but the techniques they employ sounds seriously addictive.
The main one is a deep sense of defeat. The app would keep me there longer than I want. I would waste money ordering doordash, or lose sleep, or get drunk, or all of the above. Each time, I'd feel like I set myself back a little too far. I'd try to ignore the feeling, but wouldn't know what to do. What's the default action? Keep scrolling. And of course I'd just keep missing more such personal deadlines. Then I'd feel more defeated, and keep scrolling. It just spirals further and further down, far past rock bottom. Maybe it's what advancing the Kola Superdeep Borehole felt like.
I have... so many questions. Not the least of which is, why? I gave TikTok maybe 10 minutes of my time, once a year just to see what others are seeing. And each time, it was always meaningless junk. I'd uninstall the app after; it does nothing for me. Why did it captivate you?
Why does one person become addicted to gambling while another can visit a casino, try it once and then just walk away?
Not 12-14 hours but the novelty-seeking of new stories and discussion topics is a compelling escape (especially since it'll just be "a few minutes" I think to myself) and then I end up getting drawn into conversations and seeing new thread responses I should respond to, both of which may result in going down additional rabbit holes in order to back up the response...
Oh shoot, we were talking about TikTok right?
These short 'dopamine hits' are anywhere. As a kid I really loved reading encyclopedias, even read dictionaries for 'enjoyment'. Wikipedia was awful for me.
Nobody ever saw it as a bad thing though, many people even encouraged me. Looking back at it 90% what I read was absolutely useless besides some novelty and being useful for quizzes.
Wonder what I could've done with all the time I lost, probably changed my behaviour in general. Can't imagine how much tiktok changes these kids.
I’m similar. I’ve installed the TikTok app a half a dozen times and it just doesn’t click for me.
YouTube I enjoy more, but I still don’t spend much time on it. I mostly go on there looking for something in particular and don’t spend much time scrolling. Their recommendations are terrible and creators chasing the algorithm is making every interesting corner round.
Instagram I like. I love to see updates from friends and family but that runs out quickly so I don’t end up spending much time there.
Facebook is good for their marketplace when I’m looking to buy something or give something away.
Mastodon is boring, X is offensive, posts on BlueSky and Threads feel fake and performative. LinkedIn is full of journeys and learnings and I’m not interested in either.
HN is the only social media site I visit with any kind of frequency.
Please, sue them. They are harming people, yourself included.
(in addition to other replies) I believe there was a study on brainrot where, acrosss a few different platforms, TikTok was significantly worse than e.g. Youtube. (sry, on mobile or I'd ref. hopefully later...)
Oh, they’re coming for IG, too:
“IG is a drug”: Internal messages may doom Meta at social media addiction trial
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/tiktok-settles-h...
(regardless of the fact Google is included in the suit;) Youtube is a different model I think. Yes you can burn time with it forever if you are bored, but it's not the relentless dopamine machine gun that IG and Tiktok deliver. (which is why YT tried to get in on that with shorts, but failed).
They are also defendants in the same lawsuit, but they have not settled.
"The defendants now include Meta - which owns Instagram and Facebook and YouTube parent Google. Snapchat settled with the plaintiff last week."
TikTok is not being singled out in this trial; the plaintiff is suing all the Socials; TikTok is merely the one to have settled most recently:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/tiktok-settles-h...
Did you read the article? Snapchat, Meta and Google are also defendants. Snapchat and now Tiktok have settled.
The timing is interesting. TikTok settles right as jury selection begins, Snap settled last week. Meta and YouTube are the ones staying in.
I wonder if the settlement amounts will ever become public. The Big Tobacco comparison keeps coming up, but those settlements were massive and included ongoing payments. Hard to imagine social media companies agreeing to anything similar without admitting some level of harm.
As a parent of two kids (8 and 6), I think about this constantly. We limit screen time pretty aggressively, but it's getting harder as they get older. The "attention-grabbing design" part isn't some conspiracy theory. These apps are explicitly optimized for engagement. The question is whether that optimization crosses a legal line.
Curious how the trial plays out with Zuckerberg on the stand.
I think a major part of the difficulty is because kids (and arguably adults even more) are practically forced to use screens for schoolwork.
Can't really be without a phone when they need to meet up with friends either. Completely going against smartphones and screens could end up isolating them.
> We limit screen time pretty aggressively, but it's getting harder as they get older.
Curious into what kind of example you as a parent are setting in limiting screen time for yourself. For me, it's easy as I'm an old fart that has had a longer time without devices than with one while also not participating in the socials. We now have parents that have had a device for the majority of their life having kids that will never know a time without devices. So this is an honest bit of curiosity at the risk of sounding judgemental.
Not sure why poeple don't just put the phone down? We really are the most sheltered gentle generation. Oh no, this app is taking up my time, we need to BAN IT.
Not drinking or gambling works so well for alcoholics and gamblers. Who needs rehab anyway?
And are their laws about how much I can go gamble at the casino right now or how much I can go buy at a liquor store and drink tonight?
Pretty sure too much gambling and too much alcohol is worse than watching too many short videos. So how can we say that spending time on figuring out how to block people from watching too many short videos is a better use of our time and resources than limiting gambling and drinking.
There are laws about the age you can be to gamble or drink, restrictions on the establishments where these things can occur, and you can have your license revoked for driving while under the influence, or be banned from a casino. Don't act like those are totally unrestricted activities.
And yet we're talking about a case against social media companies and not a case against casinos or distillers.
Yeah because casinos and distillers already have laws regulating their use
Nice straw man.
Nobody is talking about banning anything, we’re talking specifically about holding social media companies accountable for marketing to children a product that is knowingly addictive and potentially harmful to their health.
Part of the issue with social media is that no reasonable parent lets their 12 year old watch porn or drink but Instagram and ticktock are on a lot more 12 year old’s phone’s than you realize. Social media has network effects and creates tremendous social pressure to not make your kid “different” when half the classroom is sharing TikToks.
I’m not conservative in the slightest but I see no reason to treat social media any differently than alcohol, tobacco or gambling. Available without restriction to adults but limited to children under a certain age.
That's not how addiction works. If you could "just stop" then it isn't really an addiction.
Huh, that's exactly the solution to addiction? Step 1 is always changing your behaviour patterns to break out of habits and avoid things that draw you into it.
Make your bedroom a phone-free zone, charge it in the living room overnight, use the built in parenting and screentime controls that every modern phone OS has, don't let your kids stare at the screen all day. Etc.
This isn't rocket science. Self control is one of the most important things you need to learn. It sucks and it's hard but it's basic life stuff.
The only difference with social media addiction vs drugs/gambling is that it's not socially ostracized like other addictions so people ignore it.
This is the lie that keeps people addicted. Plenty of people quit their very real addictions every day. If you imagine you're helplessly addicted, you will remain addicted.
Tell that to a drug user. It works the same way.
And when the app is developed purposely to make people addict, that’s an issue.
You can’t just blame the user when their chance to have a normal app usage have been rigged.
re adults it does fall to individual responsibility , re kids we can partially blame parents for not taking care of their kids properly , overall the enemy of our attention has quadrillions of dollars which is fairly difficult to fight against
Scraped from unsealed court/discovery docs about the addictive potential of various social media platforms: https://techoversight.org/2026/01/25/top-report-mdl-jan-25/?...
I think too much gets made of addiction in a soft sense and not enough in a hard sense
If I log off Facebook and it starts spamming me with fake notifications, it's addictive in a way that's more than just "Facebook provides a great service! I'm on it all the time! It's so addictive! :)"
If feeds were chronological and they didn't blatantly lie to your face, or you got messages on time (they like not sending it to you by email) it wouldn't be addictive in a lab rat style
(This is Facebook, not TikTok, but still. And yes, I know TT tries to be addictive on purpose)
I'm addicted to pro-Release-the-Epstein-Files, anti-Trump, anti-ICE, and Innocent-Americans-Being-Shot-Dead-in-the-Streets-Then-Accussed-of-Being-Terrorists videos, and they just cut me off cold turkey, dammit!
TikTok blocks Epstein mentions and anti-Trump videos, users claim. Alleged censorship comes after investors loyal to Trump take over social media platform.
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/tiktok-epstein-trump-cens...
>TikTok users in the US have reported being unable to write the word ‘Epstein’ in messages amid accusations that the social media platform is suppressing content critical of President Donald Trump.
>The issues come less than a week after TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, was forced to divest a majority stake in its US operations to a group of investors loyal to President Trump, who was a close associate with the late convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
It is not about Trump. Think a little deeper.
It indirectly involves the trump administration due to the threats of bannimg it in the US last year, then delaying it until they could find an American buyer.
I don't think the recent censorship of US American policy is a coincidence when you consider these factors.
Remember: there was a TikTok ban that was signed into law and took effect on January 19, 2025 which said that it would be allowed back once it was owned by a US company.
Trump did not enforce the ban.
As soon as TikTok changed ownership last week, censorship of posts that are not in line with the Trump regime began happening.