Are Social Media Platforms Addictive – or Just Harmful?

Social media companies including Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Snap Inc are facing lawsuits alleging that their platforms harmed users’ mental health during childhood, with claims raging from depression and eating disorders to self-harm and suicide. Although these cases are often labeled “social media addiction trials”, experts caution that the term addiction may be scientifically imprecise when applied to social media use. 

Researchers increasingly favor terms like “problematic use “rather than addiction, nothing that while social media can negatively affect mental health, its average impact across populations is relatively small and complex. Scientists emphasize a bidirectional relationship: poor mental health may both result from and contribute to excessive social media use.

Addiction affects both the “reward system”, primarily governed by dopamine release, and the “self-control system”, primarily governed by the prefrontal cortex.”