Why Is Regulating Social Media So Difficult?

Social-media companies are facing a growing challenge to the business model that keeps users scrolling, watching and responding for as long as possible.

Platforms including Facebook, YouTube and TikTok have been accused of using recommendations, continuous feeds and frequent notifications to encourage addictive use. The criticism has focused particularly on children and teenagers, amid concerns about anxiety, depression, self-harm and dissatisfaction with body image.

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, recorded $196.2 billion in advertising revenue last year, according to the article. Its ability to keep users in front of screens has helped drive that business, but the model now faces expanding legal and regulatory pressure.

At the start of the month, 29 U.S. states, including California, Colorado and New Jersey, sued Meta, alleging that it deliberately designed its platforms to make young users dependent on them. In a publicly announced settlement, Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion to 47 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories. Texas reached a separate settlement worth $1 billion. Meta also agreed to introduce limits on usage time and overnight blocking for underage users.

Governments have tightened rules in recent years, but lawmakers struggle to keep pace with rapidly changing technology. Studies have linked teenage social-media use to higher rates of anxiety, depression and body dissatisfaction. Documents made public in 2021 also showed that Meta’s own researchers had identified links between Instagram, body-image problems and mental-health concerns among some teenage girls. Amnesty International testing in 2023 found that TikTok’s algorithms could recommend videos about depression and self-harm to users searching for mental-health content.

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Companies of this size, with such a major influence on people’s lives, must meet basic safety standards.