Phoenix 24
The comparison concerns corporate responsibility and addictive design, not identical medical consequences.
WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES
Social-media companies are facing a wave of lawsuits, regulatory proposals and public-health criticism increasingly compared with the campaign against the tobacco industry. The analogy gained momentum after Meta agreed to pay up to approximately $18 billion to resolve claims brought by US states and territories over alleged harm to children using Facebook and Instagram.
The lawsuits accused Meta of designing features that encourage compulsive use among minors, including infinite scrolling, autoplay, recommendation algorithms and persistent notifications. They also alleged that the company minimised known risks while attempting to attract users at increasingly younger ages. Meta did not admit wrongdoing and has repeatedly defended its existing protections for teenagers.
Under the settlement, Meta must introduce measures such as default time limits, overnight restrictions, muted school-hour notifications and stronger parental controls. Certain appearance filters and engagement features will also be restricted for younger users. Critics argue that several protections can be modified with parental permission and that the agreement does not provide sufficient independent oversight of the company’s algorithms.
The comparison with tobacco has clear limits. Cigarettes cause direct, extensively documented physical disease, and no level of tobacco exposure is considered safe. Social-media research instead shows associations between intensive or problematic use and anxiety, depression, disrupted sleep, body dissatisfaction, cyberbullying and exposure to self-harm or eating-disorder content. These relationships can be serious, but they vary according to the child, platform, content and manner of use.
Social networks can also provide friendship, educational information, creative expression and access to supportive communities. This makes prohibition more complicated than tobacco regulation. Current evidence does not establish that every child will be harmed or that screen time alone causes mental illness, but it supports concern about products deliberately engineered to maximise attention.
The historical parallel is therefore primarily regulatory. The 1998 tobacco settlement forced companies to accept financial penalties, advertising restrictions and greater scrutiny after decades of disputed claims. Social-media platforms may now be entering a similar period in which design choices once treated as commercial decisions are examined as matters of child protection and public health.
La verdad es estructura, no ruido. / Truth is structure, not noise.