What really counts as social media "addiction?"
It's Been a Minute
NPR
4.7 • 9.2K Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2026
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tech companies are back in court...and likely will be for a while. A wave of lawsuits allege that platforms - like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat - are addictive and harmful, especially to children. These cases could change platform regulations and this country's interpretation of what counts as "addiction."
Brittany is joined by NPR correspondent Shannon Bond, and Dr. Carl Erik Fisher, addiction psychiatrist and author of The Urge: Our History of Addiction, to find out what these court cases mean for our relationships with social media - and how social algorithms are fundamentally reshaping our understanding of "addiction."
(0:00) Is social media bad for your mental health?
(1:54) What people are taking social media platforms to court
(7:27) How social media is changing what counts as "addiction"
(15:01) Behavioral vs. Substance addiction
(18:11) How to change your relationship to social media
(23:21) Systemic interventions for social media use
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Akela Sherrills remembers the day in 1992 when the Bloods and Crips gangs in his Watts |
| 0:06.2 | neighborhood agreed to a ceasefire. |
| 0:09.1 | We had a barbecue. |
| 0:10.5 | It was like it became a family reunion. |
| 0:12.4 | I mean, we had a three-decade war, you know, so the release was just extraordinary. |
| 0:18.6 | Listen to the TED Radio Hour on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:23.9 | Okay, I'm going to pose an impossible question to you. |
| 0:26.5 | It's totally not a yes or no question that I'm going to pose to you as a yes or no question. |
| 0:31.2 | Is social media addictive? |
| 0:34.0 | Yeah, so I would say it is a yes or no question. |
| 0:37.1 | And some people feel very strongly yes. And some people feel very strongly no, and that's a problem. |
| 0:45.5 | So I don't know about all of you listening, but sometimes I am scrolling through social media, and I lose track of time, and suddenly I'm watching a rug cleaning video at 3 o'clock |
| 0:56.2 | in the morning on a Tuesday. Some of you might call this kind of experience quote unquote addictive |
| 1:01.8 | and bad for your mental health and you wouldn't be alone. In fact, you'd relate to more than |
| 1:07.7 | a thousand individual plaintiffs who are taking social media companies |
| 1:11.2 | to court over the addictiveness and mental health impacts of their platforms. |
| 1:16.4 | These court cases are the tip of a user-led backlash against social media. |
| 1:22.4 | Is social media bad for your health? |
| 1:26.4 | A jury will eventually decide, but today I want to explore that question with the tech correspondent |
| 1:31.4 | and an addiction expert who can help us tease out what addiction is. |
| 1:36.4 | And when does a social media norm cross the line from personal habit into personal pathology? |
| 1:46.8 | Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, |
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