Social media is a tapeworm, burrowing into the minds of whomever it comes in contact with. It destroys people’s sense of self, disrupts every chance at sleep and throws you into an endless pit of darkness and despair. At the center of it are the companies that pump you full of dopamine. They force-feed you “content” and will keep feeding you until you for as long as you stay on your phone. It is now our job to stop this cybernetic pandemic before it spreads to more victims.
There have been attempts to combat the spread of social media. The last large-scale case was TikTok v. Garland, which tried to shut the app down for allegedly leaking information. This case would be overshadowed by a lawsuit that was filed in 2023 to attack not only TikTok, but some of the biggest social media apps in the world. People gathered together in support to fight Big Tech in the landmark bellwether case “K.G.M. v. Meta” in L.A. The Mentor Editorial Team stays on the side of the plaintiff and believes that children should be better protected from harmful content.
“K.G.M” is the initials of a 20 year-old woman by the name of “Kaley.” Starting at the young age of six, Kaley started using social media through YouTube. As she got older, she interacted with more social media apps and allegedly incited her struggles with body dysmorphia and depression. In 2023, she decided to sue major media companies Meta, Google, Snap Inc and Bytedance for being designed specifically to get children addicted to their content. If the defense loses, this would mean any person whose trauma is tied to social media, past and present, would push every major social media company to have to spend billions of dollars in damages.
Recently, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg testified on Feb. 19 about social media apps. Zuckerberg had said that Instagram was designed to block anyone under the age of 13, but Mark Lanier, the plaintiff’s lawyer, showed a 2015 document stating that 30% of users are 11-12 years old. It was not the first time Zuckerberg was caught in a lie. In 2021, whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked thousands of documents pertaining to Facebook, now called Meta, with details about how the company has looked the other way from the harmful content that was pushed to younger viewers.
As you know, the average scroll through the “For You” page will have many running into the occasional car crashes, cartel shootings, thirst traps and other types of graphic content akin to a snuff film. Companies know that these videos exist, but avoid getting them removed because of their high engagement rates with viewers, regardless of the harm their content causes.
There have been many attempts at age verification, the most recent being the usage of Artificial Intelligence. How it works is that it scans an image of someone and analyzes specific features to determine the age of the individual. The issue is that AI is still in its adolescence, so many can already bypass it by just using fake IDs or deepfakes. And If someone were to get access to the AI system, they would have access to millions of facial biometrics and government IDs.
To protect our children from this sort of content, we need to know that these major tech companies take this issue seriously. If the verdict goes in favor of the plaintiff, companies will have no choice but to actually enforce age verification. But in the meantime, we have to do our best to abstain from social media on occasion. It’s called a “dopamine detox,” the practice of staying off your devices for a prolonged amount of time. It resets your reward system and reduces anxiety and brain fog. You can read, exercise, or just go outside and touch some grass. We need to remind the young people that it is time to start living their lives and that it all starts with putting the phones down.
