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US courts finally say what parents knew all along—social media is built to hook children

Regulation and litigation may correct the extremes, but they cannot replace the everyday discipline of parenting or the gradual development of self-control.

As children stay glued to screens like Fevicol, a US court has finally said: social media platforms may be addictive by design. Not “oops, by mistake,” not a “side effect,” but properly engineered, like a perfectly spiced bag of chips, except the spice here is dopamine.

In what can only be described as a “finally, the adults have entered the chat” moment, two major court decisions in the US have put Big Tech under the scanner. This time, it wasn’t just for data privacy, but for children’s safety and mental health.

In California, a jury recently held Meta and Google responsible for the depression and anxiety of a woman who had compulsively used social media as a child, awarding her $6 million in damages—half for harm suffered and half as punishment. Meta, unsurprisingly, got the bigger share of the bill.

Meanwhile, in New Mexico, another court ordered Meta to pay a staggering $375 million for misleading users about how safe its platforms were for children, including exposure to explicit content and online predators.

For Indian parents reading this, the reaction is likely: “Beta, we didn’t need a jury to tell us this.” Because this experiment has already been running in homes across the country. Give a child a smartphone. Say, “Just 10 minutes.” Return later, and the child is still there scrolling with the focus of a UPSC aspirant—except the subject is reels, memes, and increasingly questionable content. 

Designed to keep children hooked

What these verdicts do is formally acknowledge something long suspected: social media platforms are not neutral tools. They are carefully designed systems, optimised to keep users engaged—especially young ones who don’t yet have the brakes fully installed.

Doomscroll? That’s not a feature—it’s a trap. It’s like being at an Indian wedding buffet where someone keeps refilling your plate before you can say no. Notifications? They arrive with the........

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