On 25 March, a California trial awarded US$6 million to a plaintiff who argued that the addictive properties of social media had caused her harm (the companies that were found liable, Meta and Google, say they disagree with the verdict and intend to appeal). Yet, despite more than two decades of study on social-media use, many researchers like me are wary of using the label of ‘addiction’.
That’s because there is no general agreement on whether social-media use can meet current standards for addictive disorders. More-rigorous research is needed, along with guidance from professional bodies such as the American Psychiatric Association (APA). This would help to establish whether social-media addiction is a clinical phenomenon — and if so, which criteria could be used to diagnose it.
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Case-based evidence has linked excessive social-media use to psychological distress and impaired functioning in some people, for example through job loss, relationship problems and academic failure. This use has been associated with differences in the structure and activity of reward-related brain regions (M. Wadsley and N. Ihssen Brain Sci. 13, 787; 2023) and with impaired decision-making (D. Meshi et al. J. Behav. Addict. 8, 169–173; 2019). Such features are observed in substance-use disorders, too.
But the issue is complex. Outcomes associated with social-media use vary widely, depending on how and why people use the platforms. ‘Active’ habits such as posting, commenting and messaging have been linked to positive well-being — unlike passive scrolling. And social media can provide social support to marginalized groups, such as young people from sexual and gender minorities (LGBTQ+).
What’s more, the field’s literature is dominated by research that is correlational, not causal — mine included. Another issue is that researchers are still debating how to measure social-media addiction, including the threshold at which social-media use becomes problematic.
Wrong use of the term addiction could lead to everyday behaviours being pathologized. Medicalizing an intense behaviour because of poor methods and measures — in effect, lowering the threshold for what counts as addiction — could waste medical resources and strain health-care systems. Wrongly diagnosed people could experience stigma and be prescribed unnecessary medication.
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By contrast, formally designating problematic social-media use as an addiction would provide mental-health practitioners with standard diagnostic criteria, thus improving screening and the development of treatments. It would also give researchers guidelines for categorizing study participants, making addiction research more robust.
In the United States, a formal designation of social-media addiction as a clinical disorder can come only from the APA. Its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) defines these conditions and guides clinical assessment and research. It provides a framework in which all US mental-health practitioners operate. And it is impactful globally: studies worldwide use the DSM diagnostic criteria.
