In the World of Tech, What Makes an Addiction?
We all love our gadgets, whether they be used to let us know who is at our front door or so as to let us watch a TV programme on the largest possible screen. From smart rings to electric cars, gadgets are an ever-present in the lives of nearly everyone.
The problem is, the more that we use them, the more they can become addictive and we start to struggle to put them down. This is even more the case when our gadgets are loaded up with websites and applications that we feel as though we need to login to on a regular basis.
Now, the world of tech is asking the question about what it is that makes an addiction and if there’s anything that we can do to help.
‘Addiction Machines’
In the United States of America, a trial has got underway around looking at the mental health impact of using certain applications for too long. As part of that, Instagram and YouTube have been accused of building ‘addiction machines’, with the suggestion being that such companies did it deliberately.
Now, the rest of the tech world waits to see how things pan out for Meta, the parent company of Instagram, and YouTube, wondering whether the jury will decide that the two tech giants intentionally made platforms that would ‘addict the brains of children’, or whether other issues in the lives of young people are what mainly cause the issues.
A California state court case over whether Instagram and YouTube harmed a woman’s mental health through addictive app design kicks off with opening statements, in a test of whether Big Tech platforms can be held liable for harming kids https://t.co/lC0EvtnnYI pic.twitter.com/1aFbJJ6Jbk
— Reuters Business (@ReutersBiz) February 9, 2026
The case revolves around that of a plaintiff identified only as ‘KGM’ or ‘Kaley GM’, which is owning to the fact that she was a minor when the harms that are being alleged took place.
Mark Lainer, the prosecuting attorney, said that the case was of two of the ‘richest corporations in history’ looking to engineer ‘addiction in children’s brains’, declaring in his opening remarks that the jury would get to see ‘internal documents’ that include emails between the Chief Executive Officer of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, and executives at YouTube, which people ‘don’t get to see’ in the normal course of all of our lives, explaining their ‘business goals’.
‘Problematic’ but ‘Not Addiction’
Adam Mosseri has been the head of Instagram for eight years. Unlike Snapchat and TikTok, which chose to reach a settlement agreement with KGM’s family ahead of the trial, Meta has decided to challenge the issue head-on. As part of that, Mosseri took to the stand in order to offer a suggestion that he didn’t really know how much Instagram use could be classified as too much.
Instead, he said that it was ‘a personal thing’ and that one person’s Instagram use might be more than someone else would ‘feel good about’. KGM, it transpired, had used Instagram for 16 hours during the longest single day of usage.
Mosseri said, “It’s important to differentiate between clinical addiction and problematic use. I’m sure I’ve said I’ve been addicted to a Netflix show when I binged it really later one night, but I don’t think it’s the same thing as clinical addiction.” When asked about those 16 hours that KGM spent on his platform, he referred to it as ‘problematic use’, but refused to say that it was an addiction.
Lanier informed Mosseri that KGM had made more than 300 reports to Instagram about bullying, which chimes with an internal survey carried out by Meta that found that 60% of users had experienced bullying in the previous week, but Lanier wasn’t aware of KGM’s reports.
What it Could Mean for the Industry
Although Instagram and YouTube are the two companies in the dock in this particular instance, the reality is that a wealth of other social media companies are also facing thousands of cases that are being brought by families of young people that have killed themselves after using the likes of TikTok and Snapchat.
Cases are also being brought by school districts and state prosecutors around the United States of America, meaning that the outcome of KGM’s case could have a serious impact on the tech industry as a whole. In an email from 2015, Zuckerberg was shown to have demanded ‘time spent increases by 12%’ to ensure internal business goals were met.
One of the biggest problems for the world of technology is that they need people to be addicted to their products. With a new iPhone, Samsung device or other mobile phone released every 12 months at most, the business model doesn’t work unless people are willing to spend large sums of money ensuring that they have the latest and greatest piece of tech.
Each release is the ‘best ever’, with the suggestion being that sticking with the old one will mean that you’re behind the curve. In that sense, Instagram and YouTube are essentially arguing in bad faith on behalf of an industry that, even though not declared, has addiction as one of its cornerstones.