That weak defence for not banning social media from teenagers
Zuckerberg said he would rather err on the side of too much safeguarding of freedom of expression even at the expense of protecting minors
She is now 20 years old and is known only by the initials of her name: K.G.M. She created her first YouTube account when she was 8 years old. She opened her Instagram profile at the age of 9. At 10, she was on TikTok. And on Snapchat at 11. She claims to have become addicted to social media and to have developed syndromes of anxiety, depression, problems with the shape of her body. There are thousands of cases like KGM's.
Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Meta, testified in recent days at the Los Angeles trial against Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube: the platforms are accused of creating pathological addictions and other mental health risks for adolescents. According to the prosecution, the owners of the platforms are aware of these problems and do nothing.
As always in such cases, Zuckerberg apologised for his platform's failure to prevent KGM and so many other children under 13 from registering, and promised to make amends. But otherwise he dismissed the accusations, with the usual arguments: he invoked freedom of expression, recalled the American law that does not recognise the liability of platforms for content posted by users, and stated that there is no scientific evidence to prove that platforms are addictive. As is often the case, Zuckerberg appeared a bit out of touch. In fact, this trial is interesting precisely because the accusation is not directed at the content posted by users but at the design of the platform.
First of all, Zuckerberg said he would rather err on the side of too much freedom of expression, even at the expense of protecting minors. It is an argument he learned to use when Donald Trump returned to the White House. He thought differently in January 2020, when Trump lost the election and launched the protest that led to the invasion of Congress in Washington: in that case, Zuckerberg had not protected Trump's freedom of expression and had closed his Facebook profile. But the point is that this process is not about users' freedom of expression: it is about the responsibility of the platforms that select the information to reach users, using recommendation algorithms that amplify certain contents and hide others, to engage users and keep them on the platforms for a long time. Thus, socials cease to be mere infrastructures that merely distribute user-generated content: they themselves become producers of information and editorial choices, for which they are responsible. Platforms are certainly free to express themselves, but not to harm other people: just as users can say what they want but not organise violence against other people. Also because the freedom of expression of those who harm others represses the freedom of expression of the harmed, who end up withdrawing from the platforms that make them suffer so much.
The most difficult line of defence to dismantle is the one according to which there is a lack of scientific evidence showing that the tools that platforms use to govern users' activities cause pathological addictions. Many studies observe strong correlations between intensive use of digital social networks and worsening school performance, increased anxiety, depression, loneliness, and loss of self-confidence. But correlations are not causes. It is probably easier to recognise causal relationships between social use and addiction in the case of the most fragile people. The work of Ornella Corazza, director of the centre for addiction studies at the University of Trento, and Gianluca Esposito professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology at the University of Trento, authors of Psychology and psychopathology of new addictions (Zanichelli 2025), is worth following in this regard. Moreover, the Report on drug addiction 2025 by the Department of Drug Policies notes that, in Italia, 13% of young people who use the Internet are at risk of clinical dependency.
