On March 26, 2026, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google liable for intentionally designing their social media platforms – including Instagram and YouTube – to be addictive among adolescent users. Meta and Google were found negligent in designing features to be addictive, failing to impose guardrails, and contributing to growing mental health crises among a young and vulnerable population. This news comes fresh-off the heels of a prior verdict against Meta, when on March 24, a jury in New Mexico determined that the tech conglomerate violated state law by harming the mental health and safety of the state’s children. Parents can read more about the verdicts here, and are encouraged to follow along as a long line of similar lawsuits are lobbied against Meta and Google in the weeks to come.
This movement, being dubbed as social media’s “Big Tobacco Moment”, presents an ideal time for parents to engage preteens and teenagers in a conversation about their online behavior. But as with any dialogue between parent and child, it must be done with care. Preteens and teenagers are highly emotional because their brains are still developing, with a hypersensitive emotion center (limbic system) often overpowering their not-yet developed logic center (prefrontal cortex). This neurological state, combined with limited communication skills, fatigue, and environmental stress, often leads to intense emotional reactivity and frequent meltdowns, et cetera.
So how should you, a parent, go about talking to your child about social media in light of recent affairs? Please keep reading.
How to Leverage Recent News About Social Media Platform Liability in Fueling Adolescent Addiction to Talk to Your Kids in a Healthy, Productive Way
Step 1: Share the News with Your Child
Your preteen/teenager may not have listened to pleas to abstain or limit social media use in the past because it (as they see it) was coming from a place of judgement. Recent news provides you with an opportunity to initiate or reengage them in the same conversation, without judgement.
A casual “Did you see the news about Instagram and YouTube?” can go a long way in peaking their interest on the matter, and validates that “social media addiction” isn’t just an overprotective parental worry. Furthermore, it reframes potentially excessive use as partly engineered behavior, not just a lack of self-control on their part. It reduces the potential for blame/shame for them, and gives you a credible, external reference point for healthy discourse.
Step 2: Detail Harmful Design Elements
Now that your preteen/teen has learned that the legal system recognizes that social media platforms have been engineered to promote addictive behavior, you can look at potentially harmful design elements together.
This important step is about building awareness, trust, and resilience. It helps your child develop critical thinking skills, where they learn to question what they see on social media and how it may be manipulative in nature. When positioned (by you) as being empowering to them, they feel as if newfound knowledge and awareness will make them more independent, which it absolutely does!
This part of the conversation begins with a talk about dopamine. Be mindful of the age of your child and cautious in your approach so that the discussion doesn’t come off like a lecture on neuroscience. Make it simple, relatable, and helpful for how they generally retain information and understand their own behavior. Let them know that dopamine is their brain’s ‘feel-good’ chemical, and that it can be a beneficial experience when it makes them feel motivated, excited, or proud when they do something creative and/or productive. At the same time, confirm to them that the neurochemical process can be manipulated by social media platforms through certain design elements. Below is a summary of what these design elements are, and how they promote addictive behavior. Sit together with your child and review the following list:
- Variable rewards: The unpredictable nature of engagements (likes, comments, shares, follows) act as a “variable ratio schedule” that triggers the release of dopamine, reinforcing a compulsive habit of checking for new engagements. This mechanism acts like a slot machine, where the anticipation of a potential reward is more stimulating to a preteen/teenager brain than the reward itself.
- Infinite scroll: The bottomless nature of social media feeds trigger a dopamine-driven reward loop by providing variable, unpredictable content, which is also similar to a slot machine. Each swipe offers a potential reward in the form of interesting content that causes a preteen/teenager brain to release dopamine, which motivates continued scrolling and reinforces addictive behaviors.
- Personalized algorithms: Personalized algorithms drive addictive behavior on social media by constantly tailoring content to an adolescent’s preferences and emotional triggers, maximizing engagement and screen time. These algorithms create addictive, dopamine-driven feedback loops that exploit psychological needs for social validation (more on this below) and causes young users to engage in compulsive, long-term scrolling.
- Social validation and approval: To young users, engagement metrics of likes, comments, shares, and follows are powerful and tangible markers of social acceptance and approval among peers. They act as variable rewards that activate the release of dopamine.
- Push notifications: This is in reference to social platform server-initiated messages that pop-up on devices, that can be clicked or tapped, and include alerts for likes, comments, messages, live streams, and more. They are designed for real-time engagement and direct communication, but encourage young users to reengage with a social media platform when not actively using it, making it difficult to take a break. Push notifications are designed to pull young users back in, as they often timed to arrive after periods of inactivity. Additionally, they are typically worded to spark curiosity and urgency (e.g. “Someone mentioned you…”).
- FOMO: A fear of missing out (FOMO) acts as a powerful psychological motivator among preteens/teenagers. It drives compulsive social media use by triggering their brain’s dopaminergic reward system and creates a vicious cycle of anxiety over missing experiences. It effectively forces constant, high-stakes checking, while the intermittent rewards (above detailed engagement metrics) release dopamine.
Step 3: Review Signs of Unhealthy Usage
Armed with an awareness of how social media platforms attempt to manipulate their behavior, you can now work with your preteen/teen to identify where any of these manipulations have been successful, so to speak.
Confirm that this step is not about perceptions of weakness or judgement. After all, billions of dollars have been invested by some of the most advanced minds in the tech sector to grow their daily active user (DAU) bases. You are even encouraged to highlight where you may also exhibit unhealthy social media behavior. When parents admit they may also struggle with social media, it can create a powerful bond that shifts the conversation from “me versus you” to “we’re in this this together”. The common-ground approach can make a preteen/teen far more likely to listen and take corrective action.
Below are common signs of unhealthy social media behavior. If three or more of the following are present, it’s time for a deeper conversation about intervention:
- Losing track of time when scrolling through and engaging with content on social media.
- Experiencing uncontrollable urges to frequently refresh social media feeds. This is especially problematic when usage gets in the way of a healthy night of sleep.
- Consistently checking social media updates on the phone/tablet first thing in the morning and the last thing at night.
- Neglecting homework, chores, and responsibilities to spend time on social media.
- Losing interest in activities and hobbies once enjoyed before social media usage became habitual.
- Lying to parents and loved ones about time spent on social media, particularly when asked to abstain or cut back on usage.
- Getting angry when asked by parents and loved ones about usage.
- Experiencing feelings of irritation, restlessness, or anxiousness when not able to get on social media.
- Using a smartphone/tablet and engaging with social media when not safe, such as when riding a bike or driving a car.
- Using a smartphone/tablet and engaging with social media when not appropriate, such as when in class at school or when attending practice for athletics or extracurricular activities.
- Personal beliefs and opinions are formed entirely by exposure to others’ beliefs and opinions on social media, as opposed to using critical thinking and in-person discussions (w/friends, loved ones, etc.) to form beliefs and opinions.
- Feeling the need to constantly comment on, share, and save content on social media.
- Experiencing feelings of sadness or disappointed when not getting engagement on the content shared on social media.
- Deleting posted content because it did not get an anticipated level of engagement.
- Consistently preferring social media interactions over in-person interactions.
- Exhibiting an inability to control or cut down on social media usage without success.
- Scrolling through and engaging with social media as a primary means to cope with and escape boredom.
- Scrolling through and engaging with social media as a primary means to cope with and escape negative feelings. This is especially problematic when the content one is being exposed to perpetuates negative feelings (i.e. doomscrolling).
Step 4: Recognize Benefits of Usage
Wait, what? That’s right , folks, this article is not a slander piece against social media. While it can certainly be harmful, there are also benefits for those who use the platforms responsibly. By addressing this with your preteen/teenager, you show them that the conversation is not one-sided, and that your recognize that social media may have a helpful place in their lives.
Below is a summary of potential benefits. If evident alongside select unhealthy behaviors, calling for outright abstinence can have a net-negative impact on your child’s wellbeing:
- Social connectivity: This is especially important for those who may have had trouble forming friendships in traditional in-person settings. This also includes peer support, fostering digital communities that reduce isolation, especially for marginalized, shy, or anxious youth.
- Identity exploration: Provides a platform for self-expression, community building, and experimentation with different personas.
- Outlet for interests: Provides a platform for creative expression, connecting them with niche communities (e.g. sport, art, hobbies, etc.) and offering access to diverse perspectives or educational content. It can act as a tool for creative development, allowing for self-expression and skill-building in an often anonymous space.
Recognizing the presence of mental health benefits and unhealthy behaviors relating to social media among adolescents is a complex situation to be in. It is one that often calls for family counseling, where a preteen/teenager and their parent can be empowered with the tools and skills needed to manage social media usage as a united front.
Step 5: Moving Forward
Most articles responding to the query about “talking to your kids about social media” outline a list of boundaries and strategies that look something like this:
- Set time limits: Establish a reasonable daily cap, such as 1–2 hours of recreational use during the weekdays, with the weekends being a bit more flexible. Using built-in screen time tools for awareness – not just enforcement – can also be beneficial.
- Sleep protection: This one should be non-negotiable, with a rule about no phones in the bedroom overnight (charge them outside of the bedroom) and setting a rule of no phone usage anywhere between 30–60 minutes before bed.
- No phone zones: Establish spaces and times where social media must not interrupt real life. During periods of homework and chores is a logical choice, but also consider integration for family meals, vacations, and when engaged in outdoor activities (bike rides, at the beach, etc.).
- Content to avoid: It’s not just about the time spent on social media, but the content being consumed. Doomscrolling of overtly negative content (view details here) should be off-limits. Further, content boundaries should include the blocking unfollowing of accounts that trigger unhealthy comparison (regarding body image, social status, etc.), anxiety, or negativity. Content consumption should instead focus on things that your preteen/teen finds inspiring and genuinely funny or interesting.
- Shared responsibility vs surveillance: Avoid constant monitoring or reading messages (unless there’s a safety concern). Instead, be transparent about monitoring and controls, and gradually allow increased independence as your preteen/teen exhibits greater awareness and personal responsibility.
- Practice what is preached: As discussed in Step 3 above, take ownership of your own unhealthy behaviors on social media (where applicable) and participate in some of the same boundaries being set for your preteen/teen. You become accountability partners in the process!
All of the above boundaries are valid, and can be effective in managing unhealthy social media behavior among youth. That being said, there is a LOT of nuance involved in each and every family dynamic. Furthermore, your preteen/teenager may live with an underlying mental or behavioral health concern that may overlap with unhealthy usage of social media. If they exhibit a combination of the signs of problem behavior laid out in Step 3, you are encouraged to give family counseling a try.
Kindbridge Behavioral Health is uniquely qualified to help. We’re America’s leading virtual counseling provider for those who struggle to maintain healthy relationships with internet-enabled technologies. We offer one-on-one counseling and family counseling online and by-phone. Your preteen/teenager (and you) can be empowered with the tools and skills needed to manage social media usage in a healthy and productive way that sets the table for a successful future.
