The ‘Social Media Addiction’ Narrative May Be More Harmful Than Social Media Itself

from the we’re-addicted-to-calling-habits-addictions dept

This week, a major trial kicked off in Los Angeles in which hundreds of families sued Meta, TikTok, Snap, and YouTube, accusing the companies of intentionally designing their products to be addictive (though Snap and TikTok both settled on the eve of the trial) . From the Guardian:

For the first time, a huge group of parents, teens and school districts is taking on the world’s most powerful social media companies in open court, accusing the tech giants of intentionally designing their products to be addictive. The blockbuster legal proceedings may see multiple CEOs, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, face harsh questioning.

A long-awaited series of trials kicks off in Los Angeles superior court on Tuesday, in which hundreds of US families will allege that Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube’s platforms harm children. Once young people are hooked, the plaintiffs allege, they fall prey to depression, eating disorders, self-harm and other mental health issues. Approximately 1,600 plaintiffs are included in the proceedings, involving more than 350 families and 250 school districts.

The lawyers involved are explicitly using the tobacco playbook, comparing social media to cigarettes. But there’s an important point here: “social media addiction” isn’t actually a recognized clinical addiction. And a fascinating new study in Nature’s Scientific Reports suggests that our collective insistence on using addiction language might actually be making things worse for users who want to change their behavior.

The researchers conducted two studies. In the first, they surveyed a nationally representative sample of adult Instagram users and found something striking: only about 2% of users showed symptoms that would put them at risk for addiction based on the clinical criteria in the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale. But when asked directly if they felt addicted, 18% of users agreed at least somewhat. In other words, people are dramatically overestimating whether they’re actually addicted.

This matters a lot, because calling yourself addicted can have serious consequences. The study found that users who perceived themselves as more addicted (but not necessarily more habitual) reported feeling less control over their use and had made more unsuccessful attempts to change their behavior. From the study:

Self-labeling of clinical conditions (e.g., I think I’m depressed) has proved to be associated with maladaptive responses, including lowered self-efficacy and perceived control over the pathology

To test whether the addiction framing actually causes these problems rather than just correlating with them, the researchers ran a second study. They had some participants reflect on their own “addictive” Instagram use after reading language from the U.S. Surgeon General’s somewhat questionable report warning that “frequent, excessive social media use is addictive.” The control group answered the same questions but without the addiction framing first.

The results were clear and somewhat striking: simply priming people to think about their social media use as an addiction reduced their perceived control, increased both self-blame and blaming the app, and made them recall more failed attempts to cut back. The addiction framing itself creates a feeling of helplessness! The addiction to “addiction framing” may be a big part of the problem!

It is impressive that even the two-minute exposure to addiction framing in our research was sufficient to produce a statistically significant negative impact on users. This effect is aligned with past literature showing that merely seeing addiction scales can negatively impact feelings of well-being. Presumably, continued exposure to the broader media narrative around social media addiction has even larger and more profound effects. In conclusion, the addiction label does not empower users to regain control over their use. Instead, it hinders users by reducing feelings of control, increasing self-blame, and making the experience slightly less positive.

Perhaps one could argue that everyone screaming about social media addiction is doing more real harm than any actual social media product itself.

This matters because for the vast majority of heavy social media users, the problem isn’t addiction in any clinical sense. It’s habit. Habits and addictions are different psychological phenomena requiring different interventions. As the researchers note:

For the majority of social media users, however, curbing excessive use involves primarily controlling habits. Like any other habit, social media habits can become misaligned with the original motivations for use (e.g., to obtain social rewards), or conflict with other goals (e.g., sharing true information). Strong habits are notoriously difficult to control with willpower alone. For habitual social media users, the narrative of addiction and willpower-based attempts to control behavior could profitably be replaced with habit change strategies to realign their social media use with their current preferences.

Habits are context-triggered automatic behaviors. You pick up your phone in certain situations because you’ve done it a thousand times before, not because you’re experiencing withdrawal symptoms or uncontrollable cravings, like an addiction. And habit change strategies—like removing triggers, changing your environment, or practicing substitute activities—are fundamentally different from addiction treatment.

But you wouldn’t know any of this from the media coverage. The researchers analyzed three years of news articles and found that stories about “social media addiction” vastly outnumber stories about “social media habits.” The addiction framing is everywhere. And every time the Surgeon General warns about addiction, every time a lawsuit alleges platforms are designed to be addictive, every time a news story describes teens as hooked, it reinforces the idea that users are powerless victims.

Indeed, the study found that the very lawsuits that went to trial this week are likely contributing to the problem.

In addition, over the 36 assessment months, the number of articles discussing “social media habits” never approached the number of articles including the term “social media addiction” (see Fig. 2). The stories driving these effects were often lawsuits. For example, the May 2022 and October 2024 peaks for “social media addiction” related to news reporting on multiple lawsuits against Meta (owners of Instagram). In addition, the May 2023 Surgeon General’s warning about social media addiction seems to have contributed to the steady drumbeat of new articles during the April-June 2023 period for “social media addiction.”

To be clear: most social media companies absolutely design their products with increasing engagement in mind. There are plenty of corporate incentives to keep you using the app longer. And some people genuinely do use social media in ways that harm their lives. Both things can be true while “addiction” remains the wrong frame. The question is whether calling it an addiction actually helps anyone, or whether it just makes people feel powerless.

But there’s a meaningful difference between “this product is designed to form habits” and “this product is chemically addictive like heroin.” A chemical addiction involves tolerance, withdrawal, and physiological dependence. The study found that only about 4% of users reported experiencing anything akin to withdrawal symptoms (restlessness or trouble when prohibited from using) often or very often. The most common “symptom” was simply thinking about Instagram a lot—which probably describes anyone who uses any service frequently.

I think about Techdirt a lot. Am I “addicted” to it?

The addiction framing removes human agency from the equation. It treats users as helpless victims who can’t possibly resist the siren song of the infinite scroll. But the same study that found 2% of users at risk for addiction also found that 50% of frequent users recognized they had habits around Instagram use. Those users aren’t powerless. They can change their environment, their cues, their routines. But first they have to believe that’s possible—and the addiction narrative tells them it isn’t.

Misclassifying frequent social media and technology use as addictive has muddled public understanding of the psychology behind these behaviors and likely inhibits users’ understanding of the ways to effectively control their own behavior.

It also makes the technology appear inherently harmful, when (as pretty much every study keeps showing) only a very small percentage of people seem to have truly negative experiences with it. That should be cause to create targeted solutions for those who are genuinely struggling, not to declare an entire category of technology dangerous for everyone.

So here we are: lawsuits claiming to protect users from social media’s harms may themselves be contributing to those harms by amplifying the addiction narrative. The lawyers will get paid either way. But if we actually want to help people develop healthier relationships with technology, we could start by not telling them they’re powerless addicts—and instead give them the tools to change their habits.

Filed Under: addiction, harms, social media