Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance in a Los Angeles court this week may represent a turning point in how we understand social media. The case centers on whether his company Meta’s platforms intentionally harm young users, with one plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman, arguing that her early exposure contributed to worsening depression and suicidal ideation. We may be about to see a long-overdue reckoning for Big Tech.

While the idea of addiction dominates news headlines, it’s a distracting term. Though useful in some clear-cut cases, definitional disputes lead to endless arguments about diagnostic thresholds. The more important question is whether these social media platforms contain built-in features which encourage overuse and amplify psychological vulnerability.

These platforms have long been designed to keep people on their phones for as long as possible. Infinite scrolling removes natural stopping points, while algorithmic feeds learn what unsettles or excites users and amplify it. Ads are also aggressively targeted. When a person searches for ways to change their appearance or engages with idealized images, the system registers this and delivers advertisements for cosmetic treatments or appearance-altering products. Each feature is optimized for engagement.

It’s worse when it’s for children or teenagers, especially as they are groups that constantly use their phones. But as the data on the inherent harms begin to amass, this will change.

There is a clear comparison here. When I was a child, everyone smoked. We all knew there were risks, yet we shook our heads and continued because it was culturally acceptable. Staff at the local sweet shop sold single cigarettes to children because they knew we could not afford packs of 10 or 20. While adults tutted, it continued and cigarettes were woven into daily life. Over time, evidence of smoking’s adverse effects piled up and that changed. Today, cultural attitudes have shifted, and the idea of selling cigarettes to children would provoke outrage.

Still, there are unique challenges that the internet age poses, distinct from the addictions of the past. Social media occupies a novel cultural, psychological and uniquely 21st-century position. Its harms do not present as acute physical health conditions but as gradual developmental influences. It requires complex and sophisticated analysis to understand the impact, because there is no single exposure you can isolate. Instead, over time, repeated interaction with algorithmically driven environments shapes attention, self-perception, and emotional regulation. These effects are diffuse and cumulative, so they have been easy to minimize or dismiss.

That is why trials like Zuckerberg’s are significant. For the first time, platform design is being scrutinized under oath. For years, clinicians, parents, and teachers have observed rising anxiety, mental health contagions, increased self-absorption and intensified social comparison among young people. Books such as Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation and Freya India’s forthcoming GIRLS® document how adolescents’ development is shaped within digital systems.

Crucially, this environment is neither accidental nor unavoidable. Digital companies could, at the flick of a switch, give parents meaningful control over their children’s access. They don’t, because the teen and tween market is enormously profitable. As a result, governments are beginning to intervene.

We are still at the early stages of understanding the developmental consequences of social media. The adolescent brain is highly malleable: identity, self-conception and emotional regulation are still developing. An environment which continuously monitors behavior, detects vulnerability, and feeds it back in refined form will inevitably shape the developing mind. That’s why these trials represent a turning point. The harms of social media are moving from private concern to public examination. Once that shift occurs, society’s understanding and cultural norms tend to change quickly.

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Stella O’Malley is a psychotherapist and bestselling author. She is Founder-Director of Genspect, an international organisation that advocates for a healthy approach to sex and gender.

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