Kids have been having those problems well before social media came along, so it's quite a bold claim to say they know social media made them worse. But it's a fair bet to say not a dime from the lawsuit will go to a single victim. So I'd take a really skeptical look at both sides.
I'm going to call out this fallacy every time I see it. Maybe call it the dosage fallacy?
Yes, bullying has always been a problem. Yes, society has always been force-feeding kids dangerously unattainable body images. The problem is not that these things have just been repackaged into a different kind of book or TV show. The problem is that it takes much less effort than any time in history to fake a "community" all parroting the same dangerous lie.
The old adage went "If I run into one asshole today, then I ran into an asshole. If I run into 100 assholes today, then I am the asshole, and I should reflect", and it was pretty good advice. But if one asshole can create the illusion that you ran into 100 of them, what's the appropriate response. The whole problem with facebook and instagram is that it has made coordinating bullying campaigns much MUCH cheaper from a labor standpoint. Couple that with the constant drive to keep kids on the platform and you have a system that seems purpose built to drive already anxious kids to suicide.
I can 100% keep my kids off social media. But I can't keep their classmates from assembling pages impersonating them and driving bullying via that avenue. Facebook and Instagram's engagement algorithm plays a serious role in that operation.
> Girls who used social media for at least two to three hours per day at the beginning of the study—when they were about 13 years old—and then greatly increased their use over time were at a higher clinical risk for suicide as emerging adults.
> Over the last ten years, there has been a significant rise in the risk of teenage suicide. Although several factors play a role in an individual’s choice to take their life, recent studies have established connections between mental health issues such as depression and suicidal ideation, and social media usage.
There's been a significant increase in anxiety and depression among adolescents since ~2012. It's not just business as usual, and it's significant enough that the same increase is visible in hospital admissions for self-harm. Social Media seems to be the only explanation that fits the timing and scale of the issue:
