Opinion: Social media’s ‘big tobacco moment’ is coming

The new Bloomberg Originals documentary Can t Look Away which follows parents suing tech companies after the deaths of their children is intricate to watch It should be The film lays bare what multiple parents already know Social media is rewiring their children s brains creating a generation of short attention spans and social anxiety While viewing the film what became clear is that tech platforms aren t doing nearly enough to stop it and likely never will It s apparent only in Meta Platforms Inc Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg s shift in tone In January he stood before particular of these parents at a U S Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and stated I m sorry for everything you ve gone through Before the year was out the Facebook creator s rhetoric had changed Donning a gold chain and longer hair he narrated an audience of technologists I don t apologize anymore So much for remorse I think Zuckerberg feels unfairly personally attacked Jim Steyer founder of Common Sense Media tells me Steyer s company long a thorn in the tech mogul s side promotes safer tech for children It s the billionaire s victim mentality and it s truly disappointing He basically gave the middle finger to the world and mentioned I m done Steyer adds But the real thing is he wasn t driven by the same imperatives as certain of the more responsible tech leaders and quite frankly neither were a great number of of his colleagues at the top of the company Refusal to act Realistically Zuckerberg isn t going to dive into making Instagram safer for teenagers He seems more willing to do the opposite having just reined in fact-checking and content moderation on Facebook in an obvious appeasement effort toward President Donald Trump to help improve relations with the administration Republicans have accused Meta of censorship for years while Trump has threatened Zuckerberg with life in prison Sure social media firms have made a few helpful changes until now but they ve been laughably minor In TikTok added special controls to help parents manage screen time on the app and in Instagram made teen accounts private by default Meta expanded that initiative last week but campaigners have explained the effectiveness of teen accounts is still unclear These were like band-aids on bullet wounds Neither Meta nor TikTok have addressed the algorithmic design that promotes engagement through emotionally triggering content keeping millions of kids hooked on their sites and vulnerable to being steered down misogynistic manosphere rabbit holes or to thinfluencers on Instagram who promote eating disorders And they haven t addressed the scale and speed at which harmful content can spread before any kind of moderation can counteract it Despite bipartisan enthusiasm to address online harms congressional gridlock has continued for years meaning that lawsuits like the ones featured in Can t Look Away might be a more effective remedy Litigation was instrumental in damaging Big Tobacco s grip on the arena in the s When cases exhibited through detailed documents and bystanders how cigarette makers were engineering products to be addictive and concealing the wellness risks community trust collapsed Smoking became stigmatized A similar approach is seemingly needed to stigmatize social media for under- s A cultural movement of sorts is already moving in that direction Books like The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt and Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams who gave Senate testimony on Wednesday along with television shows like Netflix s Adolescence have sparked a louder conversation despite the vacuum of provision which may be helping to accelerate changes Role of device makers A grassroots movement in the U K formed on WhatsApp groups has encouraged parents grouped by school classes across the country to delay smartphone use until secondary school Australia has passed ordinance that will ban under- s from having social media accounts by the end of this year a law that could be copied elsewhere And U K guidelines experts say that the country won t back down from fining tech firms that breach its new Online Safety Act despite Trump s latest tariff melee Meanwhile several U S states are enacting laws to push for phone-free schools And a trial is underway that could force Meta to divest Instagram following Federal Deal Commission claims of illegal acquisitions Related Articles Judge strikes down an Ohio law limiting kids use of social media as unconstitutional Social media and smart sleuthing lead to California burglary arrest Kids under will no longer be allowed to livestream on Instagram without parental consent Trump holds off on TikTok ban after he almost closed deal with ByteDance AP source says TikTok s new owner stands to inherit safety privacy lawsuits Device makers could do more here too Parental control settings on iPhones and Android phones are notoriously complicated with options scattered across different menus and unclear technical terminology Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc could streamline all that with a dedicated app instead of burying options in screen-time menus where they re easily circumvented But if they don t the option of removing phones and social media from kids is becoming more plausible even if the idea of tearing anyone away from their tiny screens is still hard to imagine It may be the only alternative to help future generations break the cycle of nonstop scrolling Silicon Valley won t save kids from products designed to be addictive so perhaps the goal should be to make social media as uncool for kids as cigarettes became in the s and s When parents schools and eventually teens themselves reject these platforms Big Tech will have no choice but to adapt Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist Bloomberg Distributed by Tribune Content Agency