Manu Joseph: What addiction? Your child’s problem isn’t social media and never was

A few months ago when the editor of Rahul Pandita’s debut novel asked me for a blurb, I wrote that his book was “addictive”. I thought I had found a way to say something meaningful about a book in a blurb, a form of praise that has become meaningless, filled with tired phrases like “tour de force.” But then I realized that I had not been paying attention to book covers. ‘Addictive’ is the new ‘unputownable.’ Apparently, the world believes addiction is a good thing, as long as it is said of a book.

Mark Zuckerberg is unlikely to ever give a blurb saying, “It’s addictive.” Because the founder of Meta is accused of being one of the world’s primary dealers of a drug. He is facing trial in Los Angeles, one that legal observers say might be a “landmark”. At the heart of the trial is the charge that social media is actually a drug.

The trial centres around a 20-year-old woman identified as Kaley or KGM who accuses Big Tech companies of ruining her mental health from the time she was a child. It resulted in a host of ailments, she alleges, including suicidal thoughts. Tech companies have been so accused before but have been protected by a US law against being held responsible for user content.

This time is different. They have been accused of a wilful “design” that harms people, especially minors, by making content consumption addictive. KGM’s lawyers have compared social media to tobacco giants, which considered cigarettes “a delivery device for nicotine.” Meta, which owns Instagram, and Google, which owns YouTube, are the primary defendants in the trial.Zuckerberg testified last week and said that his company Meta shouldn’t be blamed for the young woman’s mental health, which may have been caused by a host of complex factors.