The Infinite Scroll: Our Generation's Nicotine

I was a fifth grader, 9 years old, when President Donald Trump declared a national emergency due to the COVID-19 outbreak on March 13, 2020. That was the day my friends and I, and so many people all over the world, started having to use the internet for pretty much everything.

It was also the beginning of an unavoidable and heavy reliance on social media. Barely a week after President Trump’s 2020 COVID-19 announcement, the principal of our middle school emailed us to say all lessons would be online for the foreseeable future. I quickly realized I wouldn’t be seeing my friends in person anymore — no more PE together, weekend hangouts, or carpooling with neighbors. My classmates and I set up group chats on Discord, created Instagram accounts, and adapted to playing video games over Zoom. An entire generation was forced to rebuild our sense of community online.

Almost exactly six years later, on February 18, 2026, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, testified in an L.A. courtroom in a landmark trial about who is ultimately responsible for social media addiction and its effects. Is it the teens’ responsibility, or their parents’? Or the tech giants who design and build addictive algorithms like “infinite scroll”?

For obvious reasons, I am closely following this trial. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic supercharged our social media use, my generation was called “digital natives” for a reason. Social media offers us a never-ending, round-the-clock place to be with the people we know, get the latest on what’s happening in each other’s lives, and — for a lot of us — a space to fight off social isolation and loneliness. We connect with, learn about, and view the world through the lens of fast-paced short-form video content that magically appears in our feeds.

But the Meta trial shows the dark side of social media as well. The trial is being compared to the tobacco industry’s struggles in the 1980s; executives back then were accused of lying about smoking’s dangers and nicotine’s addictiveness. After 18 years of denial, U.S. tobacco companies finally settled lawsuits with 48 states to end marketing cigarettes to youth. (Incidentally, a vape cartridge now contains as much nicotine as an entire pack of 20 cigarettes).

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri testified that he does not believe teens can get addicted to social media. However, employees at Instagram clearly knew it was a concern as early as 2020 — around the same time that my fifth-grade friends and I started using social media on a day-to-day basis. In documents released during the trial, one Meta employee said, “Oh my gosh, y’all IG [Instagram] is a drug.” The response was, “LOL, I mean, all social media. We’re basically pushers.”

Outside of this trial, there is growing evidence on the harmful effects of social media. A 2025 study from Columbia University and Weill Cornell Medicine tracked roughly 4,300 young adults over four years, and it showed that teenagers who got hooked on social media were two or three times more prone to suicidal thoughts. The U.S. surgeon general’s 2023 advisory on social media shows that adolescents spending more than three hours a day on social media feeds are at double the risk of experiencing depression and anxiety. The Pew Research Center’s 2025 report, “Teens, Social Media and AI Chatbots,” showed that a fifth of teenagers are on social media “almost constantly.”

Today, Meta’s apps, including Facebook and Instagram, have more than 3.5 billion daily users. The scope of this problem begs the question: What should we do about it?

The Australian federal government’s answer to that question was to impose new age restrictions for social media for everyone under 16. Their Online Safety Amendment Act 2024 went into effect in December 2025. Spain, Denmark, and Malaysia have all announced similar plans.

My initial reaction to these laws was disappointment. The lawmakers in these nations hadn’t quite grasped the norms of my generation. I used to believe that parents and their kids should be the only ones determining how much time young people spend on social media, with zero interference from the federal government. Negotiating screen time with my mom is already challenging enough — do I really need Uncle Sam poking his nose in this issue as well?

However, I am now convinced that endless scrolling through social media feeds is the modern equivalent of vaping. If the above evidence about its addictive nature isn’t enough, and you are still skeptical about the research findings, I’d recommend searching up the “Lost Screen Memorial” — an art installation which details the tragic stories of 50 children whose deaths were directly linked to social media; it had a powerful impact on me.

The sheer size of this issue requires our federal government to come up with practical policies to regulate how young people can access social media. A complete and outright ban — as exists in Australia, for people younger than 16 — feels excessive, as it prevents an entire age bracket from using platforms to connect with others and find out what is happening in the world. Policymakers need to find a sensible middle ground: one which holds the tech giants to account for the product designs that are addictive — for instance, “infinite scroll” — but which also protects the right of the young people to safely access the increasingly digital world we live in.

Parents, please use this article to spark an honest conversation with your teen. I'm thankful my mom did that with me.