‘Engagement, engagement, engagement’

Back in 2023, dozens of U.S. states sued the tech company Meta, accusing it of hooking children on Instagram and Facebook and hiding what it knew about the harm. Four of them—California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey—took the case to trial in Oakland, California, last month. About a week in, Meta settled. On August 26, it agreed to pay 51 attorneys general at least US$12.1 billion over 10 years, rising to US$17.1 billion if its rivals accept similar terms.

The deal remakes Instagram and Facebook for American teenagers. Within a year, Meta must verify users’ ages. Under-18s get a two-hour daily limit by default, a block from midnight to 6 a.m., and no notifications overnight or during school hours. Nobody will see the likes on their posts. Cosmetic surgery filters are gone, and teens can choose a feed that isn’t tailored to what they’ve already watched.

New Mexico went further. A jury there found in March that Meta had misled the public about the safety of its platforms and ordered US$375 million in civil penalties. In August, a judge added US$567 million for treatment and prevention. He likened Meta’s platforms to a factory, and the psychological harm to children to “the pollution that must be abated.” Meta has asked him to cut the award or grant a new trial.

Meta says it has a strong record of protecting teens. But more Americans are coming to believe that social media can harm teenagers, who spend more and more of their lives online—on social media throughout the day and gaming long into the night. As Sara Robin has discussed here in The Signal, the tech is so addictive that it’s almost a wonder teenagers are ever off their smartphones.

So what—if anything—is getting them offline?

Ioakim Boutakidis is a professor of child and adolescent studies at California State University, Fullerton, and a fellow in education research and policy at the American Institute for Boys and Men. Boutakidis says some teenagers spend far less time online than others, and the gap runs largely along lines of class and ethnicity: White and Asian teenagers are online less than others, though still increasingly every year. Parents make a difference, too. Those who put down their own phones stand a good chance of getting their children to.

Social media, Boutakidis says, works like any other addiction: It fills a need that isn’t being met. Teenagers need to measure themselves against people their own age—it’s how they work out who they are. When they can’t do that among friends in person, social media does it for them, without any of the mess of real relationships. And the platforms make their money keeping them there …

Gustav Jönsson: Just how online are American teenagers?

Ioakim Boutakidis: Depending on the survey, anywhere from two to eight hours a day. Researchers still debate what counts as too much, but the negative outcomes seem to start soon after the four-hour mark. Almost all the research looks at two things—social media and online gaming. So when we say “online,” that’s what we mean.