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The explosion of social media over the first two decades of the 21st Century has had a similar social effect on American society as the advent of the automobile in the early 20th Century. In the early years, auto manufacturers did not consider user safety in car design at the same time that the increased speed of motorized transportation made road accidents far more deadly. The increased threat of in auto injuries in the first half 20th Century lead to an expansion of government safety regulation and the advent of product liability litigation against auto manufacturers. Product liability litigation forced auto manufactures to compensate consumers for foreseeable injuries arising from safety defects in their cars. This in turn provided the economic incentive to act proactively to design safer automobiles and incorporate the cost of user safety into the cost of product. As a result, the rate of automobile fatalities has delinked 61% since 1930. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatality-trends/deaths-and-rates/

Like the automobile, social media has brought people closer together and enhanced convenience and fluidity of everyday life. On the other hand, social media platforms have both expanded the opportunity for harmful and exploitative messages from more traditional communications networks and increase the magnitude of the resulting harm. Just the injury from a 50 mile per hour car crash is much worse than from the collision of two horse drawn buggies, the social media platform amplifies the human cost of bullying, intimidation, hate speech exponentially. The current design of social media platforms has contributed to a 56% increase in teen suicide, skyrocketing rates of eating disorders among teens, sexual exploitation of minors and vulnerable adults and a proliferation of divisive violence in our communities. Yet in the current unregulated environment, social media companies earn billions in profits without having to bear the costs of foreseeable injuries to users of their products.

While government regulation plays an important role in improving the safety of social media platforms, it can only address problems after they become publicized either by company whistleblowers or investigation. Mover safety improvements resulting from government action is limited to the specific defect addressed by the particular regulation. In contrast, product liability litigation forces social media companies to act proactively to anticipate harms arising from the foreseeable use of their platforms and take reasonable steps to improve consumer safety. Until social media companies are forced to include the cost of victim compensation in their financial model, they will have no incentive to curtail their profit margins by designing safer products.