In two landmark rulings this week, Meta and YouTube were found liable for deliberately designing social media products that cause harm to children. The trials, which took place in California and New Mexico, tested a new legal theory – that harm is caused not by the content children see, but by the products themselves, which were knowingly made to foster addiction. Companies were shown to have acted with malice, oppression, or fraud. Furthermore, young users were not properly warned about the products’ associated risks.
These rulings are viewed as a major step toward reining in social media companies’ powerful influence. While there is no doubt that they set an important precedent, many parents might wonder what the rulings mean for their own lives. It can be hard to see a connection between high-level decisions made in a distant court and everyday arguments with children at home about social media use. I encourage parents to use these rulings as a jumping-off point for valuable family discussions.
Talk to your child about the rulings. Find out what they know and think. Explain why these cases matter and what it means for social media companies to be held accountable. Ask them what responsibility a designer might have for user behaviour. Offer a comparison to the tobacco industry, which also harmed children on an industrial scale (and has been rightfully condemned for it). Take this chance to ask your child about their own social media use, something many parents are reluctant to do. Ask how it makes them feel and what they think healthy use looks like.
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Take a moment to recognize how monumental these rulings are and to celebrate the fact that raising children in a digital age just got a tiny bit easier. After years of battling screen addiction in isolation – and likely feeling like you’re losing the battle – reinforcements have arrived. You now have something definitive to point to when a stubborn child demands to know why they can’t have social media yet. The platforms are officially the bad guys, not you!
You are still in charge at home, however, and you have a duty to protect your child. These rulings will push social media companies to redesign their products to be less addictive and prone to compulsive use, but those changes will take time and be imperfect. So we parents remain the first line of defence and need to get comfortable with reclaiming authority and saying no to premature or excessive social media use, even when our children complain that “everyone else is doing it.” It isn’t fun or easy, but it is our job.
Take this opportunity to revisit the rules surrounding social media use at home. Sixteen appears to be the minimum age at which most children can handle social media platforms responsibly; by then, their brains are more developed and able to self-regulate. (Australia recently set 16 as the minimum age for opening and maintaining social media accounts.)
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If you have children under 16 on social media, consider walking that back. You can deactivate and delete profiles. Tell them you changed your mind based on new information, or that you made a mistake. Use this script from Dr. Becky Kennedy, a New York City-based psychologist, mother of three and parenting expert. “Social media isn’t an option right now. I know that’s not what you want to hear. I know this makes your life harder in some ways, and we will get through it.” Check out the helpful 5D Method – created by Appstinence, an organization originally launched by a Harvard graduate student in 2024 – for breaking a social media habit.
Children 16 and over can learn to use social media in less harmful ways. Ensure they have a private account. Minimize or eliminate posting altogether, certainly no selfies or anything “veering toward spectacle,” to paraphrase British writer Mary Harrington. Try having a passive presence on social media – just observing, not contributing, to online interactions. They could access social media from a computer, not a phone app, which introduces friction between the urge to check and the ability to do so. Don’t allow phones in the bedroom at night; that’s where poor decisions are more likely to be made. Use social media sparingly and enforce time limits. Encourage them to communicate with friends without using social media platforms, e.g. texting directly, make phone calls, or using FaceTime.
Finally, strive to fix your child’s analog life. Make their real life interesting, so they feel less drawn to the online world. Children need things to do, and it’s up to the parent (at least initially) to ensure they have a richly varied social life, high-quality leisure activities, meaningful hobbies, and long-term goals. The aim is to build a world that makes it easier to get offline and to offer alternative forms of prestige and achievement that don’t revolve around social media’s twisted metrics.
The rulings are cause for celebration, but they don’t automatically fix everything. Parents still need to step up to protect their children from a digital deluge that threatens to rob them of their childhoods. But now they can do so with greater confidence, backed by the knowledge that nefarious players are finally being called to account, and a much-needed societal change is underway.
