Abstract
While social media offers real benefits to users, such as providing access to information and facilitating the free exchange of ideas, excessive social media use is associated with increases in anxiety, depression, and other serious mental-health harms. Social media platforms are designed to maximize profit by capturing user attention, resulting in interfaces that are dangerously addictive and prone to exposing users to harmful content. Currently, social media users alone bear the burden of navigating the dangers of social media. This is untenable. Young users, whose less developed brains leave them more vulnerable to addictive design features, find self-regulation especially challenging.
This Note surveys proposed mechanisms to make platforms operate responsibly and prioritize user safety through their design. Thus far, social media companies have lacked the incentive to design safer platforms. Courts and lawmakers attempting to regulate platforms are plagued by challenges, including companies asserting their First Amendment rights and the liability shield of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. In response, plaintiffs are pioneering a new theory of litigation: applying products liability principles to claims against social media companies. Several of these cases are set to go to trial in 2026, with the courts offering some hopeful indications that success is possible.
Ultimately, this Note argues that out of all the possible mechanisms for regulating social media, successful product liability litigation has the greatest chance to incentivize social media companies to make their platforms less addictive. However, until litigation efforts succeed, increasing public awareness and pressure on social media companies is the best option to alter the social media landscape. By finding ways to hold platforms accountable for social media addiction and associated mental-health harms, we shift the shame and burden of addiction away from users, a vital step to safeguard all users, and young users in particular.
Recommended Citation
Talia Elliott, Litigating the Youth Mental Health Crisis: Mechanisms to Regulate Addictive Social Media Design, 83 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 832 (2026).Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr/vol83/iss2/7
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Health Law and Policy Commons, Internet Law Commons, Juvenile Law Commons, Law and Psychology Commons, Law and Society Commons