The Social Media Addiction Rulings are Bigger Than Big Tobacco

Why the next wave of regulation will reshape the entire attention economy

Apr 01, 2026

The Underline:

In Short: Two landmark rulings just proved you can sue platforms for how they’re built, not just the content posted on them.

So What: The Great Attention Correction is here and it will rewrite the rules of modern life, from algorithms to AI to data privacy.

What Happened?

New Mexico: ruled that Meta must pay $375 million after a jury found them liable for misleading consumers over safety and enabling harm against users in child sexual exploitation cases.
Los Angeles: ruled that Meta and YouTube must pay $6 million in damages for negligence on designing addictive platforms in a case brought by 20 year old plaintiff “KGM”.

Why Are These Landmark Cases?

Both cases were built on the premise of the platform itself, not content. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has provided a shield for tech companies to be held responsible for the content that users post on their platforms. Instead these platforms were sued for a ‘defective product’ and by-design flaws to safety.

The winning arguments?

Addictive platform design, not content: In the LA social media addiction case: The platform design itself was designed to be addictive, the companies knew this and produced these products anyways. The plaintiff began using these platforms as a child (both under age of 10). She developed depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts over time compounded by these products, their endless scrolls, filters and other addictive features.
Content recommendations (algorithms): In the New Mexico child exploitation case: the argument again focused on platform design (e.g. encrypting Facebook Messenger) and internal decisions on content and curation including ignoring both internal and external warnings on the risk to child safety and ‘steering’ - through their algorithmic content recommendations - young users to sexually explicit material or exposing them to solicitation of sex trafficking.
Child Safety: These two cases hone in on child safety on the internet. While adults can benefit from these laws, the focus on children appeals to moral urgency and a sense of vulnerability. Children aren’t expected to have the risk-taking judgment as adults. But in reality, this argument works in the court of public opinion to appeal to our emotions and our universal moral imperative to “think of the children.” It’s not conservative or liberal, it’s truly common ground - at a time when few issues escape polarization.

The conversation of internet safety all comes back to one thing: owning our attention.

What’s Next?

In the medium term we can expect:

Snowball of litigation - opens the door for hundreds of similar cases with over 1,800 plaintiffs in California and federally in just the US alone.
Appeals - In both cases, the companies plan to appeal.

However, there are important cultural backdrops to this point in time:

Favorable US Political Landscape, For Now - while Trump has provided a climate favoring big tech - from advisory councils to massive tax breaks - the next administration may not.
Public Sentiment - Over 10 years, American sentiment towards big tech companies has plummeted. Largely, the public does not trust these firms.
Reputational Damage - A 2025 Axios Harris Poll showed Meta’s reputation ranking as 97 out of 100 for companies most on the mind for Americans, above only X, The Trump Organization and Spirit Airlines with ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ reputations. Meta again ranked in the bottom at #94 for the UK.
Wealth Divide - The wealth gap is at a modern-day high. The top 1% of Americans control 6x the wealth of the entire bottom 50%. In terms of piece of the pie, this means the top 1% have 15% of the total wealth, while the entire bottom 50% have just 2.5%. And this divide is hitting people on a personal level. In a cost-of-living crisis where everyday living is becoming significantly more difficult, it is increasingly more visible that tech titans are getting richer. Meanwhile, everyday people - the core users of Facebook, YouTube and TikTok’s products - are plagued with rising grocery costs, electricity bills and housing costs while unemployment rises and job openings decline.

The cultural backdrop largely does not favor tech titans. Yet, these platforms power the tools we depend on for social connection, entertainment, escapism, relaxation and staying ‘informed’ - increasingly through punchy consumable video content.

This Brings Us to One Place: The Reckoning

Meta, TikTok, Google and top Social Media platforms have amassed massive wealth by monetizing our attention. Now the spotlight is on the how.

In the attention economy, our time and our attention are our most valuable resources. These companies have long realized this and have created empires built on money, power and influence. As a public, we are waking up to the power this holds to redefine the attention equation to include wellness and safety.

The Great Attention Correction: Opening the Door for Vast Regulation

Similar to the Privacy Wave that swept website cookies and consumer data (The EU’s GDPR, California’s CCPA, Australia’s Privacy Act, Apple’s ATT, among others), the next wave of regulation is here.

And attention is the starring lead.

What’s to come?

Social media bans for kids - Australia was the first, France was the second. There are more to come. First, in the absence of regulations over the mechanics themselves, and then as companions to these very regulations.

Algorithmic control - the New Mexico ruling showed Meta knowingly ‘steered’ or recommended content that harms children. This ‘steering’ is the algorithm at work. These models are also known to surface misogynistic content within 23 minutes for accounts mimicking 16-18 year old boys, irrespective of viewing preferences. In the attention economy, the algorithm is the gatekeeper, the curator and the editor all in one. With Meta reporting 3.58 billion people use one of their products each day - this is unmatched power. A growing movement for opt-in feeds could shake up the very nature of these platforms: flipping the switch from defaulting into an algorithm to explicitly opting into an algorithmic feed. Upscrolled’s meteoric rise shows the demand to escape algorithms is real, and growing.

Addictive mechanics - Infinite scrolling, autoplay videos, push notifications and rewards for usage are common ‘engagement’ techniques used to keep consumers engaged for long periods of time. The EU has labeled these ‘addictive’ and are exploring regulating these mechanics. These two court cases open the door for state-level and federal-level regulation in the US and offer strong examples for global cases to build on.

AI regulations - While YouTube has maintained they resemble a video streaming platform more than social media, the lines between social, video and GenAI continue to blur. With Google and Microsoft operating two of the largest GenAI tools in-market as part of their product suites, and Meta heavily investing in AI tools in its apps, the calls for AI regulation are growing, following a number of suits alleging that AI Chatbots encouraged violence or self-harm.

Data privacy and consent - Algorithms are based on data. Some of this is largely understood - it’s the silent deal we made to use Facebook in exchange for tolerating ads. We ‘paid’ with our eyes, our clicks and our attention. This data on what we liked, didn’t like, read, or passed over helped build the foundation for some of the most sophisticated advertising targeting AND fuels some of the most powerful recommendation algorithms on the planet. There are mounting questions about what is used to train Meta AI - is it Instagram direct messages (DMs) or only engaging with Meta AI? As of December, it was the latter. As of March, new de-encryption changes open the door to AI-powered scanning and content moderation for Instagram DMs. While this helps Meta comply with law enforcement and is designed to help limit scams and provide safety benefits, it does open the door for more surveillance of user’s content. Even if Meta is not using DM’s to train the algorithm now, we’ve seen internal policies can shift quite quickly.

The social media addiction trials are so much more than a ‘big tobacco’ moment for big tech. It’s going to usher in a new era redefining the very fabric of our digital lives in the attention economy.

Cigarettes were a consumable - an addictive habit that was hard to quit. When stretched, it was a marker of identity. The consumer traded dollars for cigarettes, and this harmed their health and the health of those around them through secondhand smoke.

What faces social media addiction is much larger: it is the interconnected system powering our digital lives and generating trillions of dollars of value every year. It underpins so much of the attention economy. We are entering a reset: the Great Attention Correction. The wave of regulation to come will rewrite the way our economy is powered.