In his 2020 Netflix special, 23 Hours to Kill, comedian Jerry Seinfeld described the obsessive attachment many people have to their smartphones as “device dictatorship.” A reflection of this obsession is the panic we feel when we lose track of our phones:

You ever have that second where you don’t feel it? You’re walking along, you hit the pocket… “Where is it?! Where is it?!” You start slapping yourself like you’re on fire. You’re hitting your legs, your chest… you’re looking at your own hands like they’ve betrayed you! “I had it! It was part of me! Now I’m just… empty!”

“Oh, here it is. I just moved it from this pocket to this pocket. I didn’t know where it was for a second. I’m okay. That was really close. I almost had to rejoin the actual world for a minute. That was terrifying.”

He similarly describes the “phone hand-off” when you let someone else hold your phone and want it back immediately: “I’ve handed you my heart, my lungs, my bank account, and my permanent record. I’m standing there, breathless, waiting for my ‘self’ to come back to me.”

This fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) obsession is, of course, exactly what the companies behind Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, SnapChat and the rest want — a dopamine-fueled addiction to social media that lets them gather more information about us and sell more targeted ads. We are not the customer; we are the product.

The collateral damage is that the material that best hooks us on social media is often inflammatory and/or untrue and is strongly linked to many mental health issues, including self-esteem, body image, isolation, depression, unwanted advances, and bullying. A Facebook whistleblower testified before a Senate subcommittee that the company’s executives publicly touted Facebook as building community even while their own internal research showed strong links between social media usage and negative mental health outcomes, particularly for teenage girls.

The social media titans are unlikely to restrict access but governments might. In 2026, the UK government announced that it would ban children under the age of 16 from social media, including TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and X. Of course, enforcing such a ban will be tricky.

Another deterrent might be to sue the bastards.

Social Media Addiction Litigation

Meta and Google recently lost a bellwether case accusing them of exacerbating children’s mental health struggles by intentionally addicting them to unhealthy social media. (SnapChat and TikTok agreed to confidential settlements shortly before the trial began.)

The plaintiff testified that she began using YouTube at age 6 and, at age 10, was using Instagram daily. In middle school, she was using social media before school, during school, and after school. In high school, she was spending up to 16 hours a day on Instagram. When asked why she didn’t just put her phone down, she said, “I can’t. I just can’t be without it.”

Internal documents were damning. Contradicting Mark Zuckerberg’s claim that children under 13 were banned from Instagram, a Meta PowerPoint slide indicated that they were actively trying to hook 10-to-12-year-old tweens: “If we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens.” In an email chain, one Meta employee said, “Oh my gosh y’all, IG is a drug.” Another employee responded, “Lol, I mean, all social media. We’re basically pushers.” A Google strategy memo said that YouTube’s goal “is not viewership, it’s viewer addiction.”

Exhibit 0005.00001 was a smoking-gun Meta flow chart that the plaintiff’s lawyer labeled “The Feedback Loop of Harm” The chart described an intentional vicious-cycle strategy in which vulnerable users with self-esteem or body-image issues might go to Instagram; find unflattering comparisons, bullying, and body filters that make them feel worse about themselves; and (according to Meta research) increase their compulsion to continue using Instagram.

The jury found that Meta and Google acted with malice in using autoplay, endless scrolling, and other features to addict users and they awarded damages of $6 million ($4.2 million from Meta and $1.8 million from Google). If this verdict survives appeal, the social media titans will have to fight or settle thousands of similar lawsuits.

Tellingly, the plaintiff in this case is still addicted to social media. She bought a book and television to distract her but has not opened the book or turned on the television, admitting that, “Even now, even after the lawsuit, I’m still addicted. I’m still scrolling my life away.”