What Changes Do You Foresee in the Legal Landscape Regarding Social Media Addiction Lawsuits?

Something that I did not know before I started this work is that products liability law was a product of the courts—it was not a law that was passed. It was a scenario where we had a change in how things worked. We had more machine processes, companies were being mass marketed and mass distributed, and consumers were being harmed. So what the courts—and I believe New York and California—did as they looked at these issues, they realized, “Hey, this is a different world we live in, and our laws are not equipped to address it.” But the beautiful thing about our legal system is that it adapts, and it is meant to adapt. So they began looking at things like who should bear the risk and who can bear the risk. The entire concept of products liability law was that, as a society, these companies that are mass marketing, controlling all the processes, and making all the decisions are the ones in the best position to bear that risk. And not having them bear that risk is not good for society, because it means consumers are being harmed and don’t have a way to fix things. I’m not sure where the social media and similar platforms’ legal landscape goes, but I think that in a perfect world we recognize these platforms for what they are. Maybe they’re not a traditional product—they are a product, though, right? Maybe they’re a hybrid of a product and a service. They are something different than just a neutral communication platform. They are actively involved. They are materially contributing. They are the only ones who know what they’re doing, and we’ve learned over the last two decades they won’t tell us what they’re doing. They will literally stand there in Congress and deny that they’ve designed these products to be addictive, when their own documents talk about it. It is fundamentally unjust when consumers who have no control over these products are bearing all of the risk. They’re suffering all of the harms, and these companies are just getting away with it.