Who's Addicted to Addiction? Sally Satel on the Social Media Trials & America's Therapeutic Culture

**Andrew Keen** (0:00)
Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.
Hello, everyone. Back in March, there was the so-called Landmark Social Media Addiction Trial in which Meta and YouTube were defeated in court. A lot of people celebrated this. They thought it was a good thing. Big Tech had it coming, and regular viewers and listeners to the show know that I'm not necessarily one of Big Tech's greatest friends. But the aftermath of this was a little odd. It was treated as if it was a massive victory. There were cries and jubilation outside the courtroom.
I wonder whether a lot of it was justified. It's worth me adding the caveat that my wife is head of litigation at Google, so maybe I'm a little biased here. But my guest today, Sally Satel, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is less biased, or at least less has institutional interest in this case. And she has articulated a degree of skepticism. She wrote an interesting piece for persuasion recently, arguing that social media addiction is way more complicated than you think. And she has a new book coming out early next year called Not a Disease, which I'd like to get her back on the show with. Sally is joining us from Washington, DC., where she lives and works. Sally, were you a little disturbed as I was by some of the almost religious jubilation, this euphoria that greeted this addiction trial?

**Sally Satel** (2:15)
Well, I'm not surprised. Certainly, anytime you have massive litigation, the other side, the winning side is going to be ecstatic.
In this case, of course, in a material way, the settlement to this individual young lady wasn't huge, but it's a so-called bellwether case that has implications for future litigation and what kinds of arguments resonate with juries, what kinds of strategies, and the subsequent litigation that's coming down the pike is massive. In fact, just as of yesterday, four states, I'm just going to read this to you very quickly, with four states, California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey, alleged that the tech giant, this is just Meta, violated their state laws aimed at protecting consumers by misleading the public about the safety of their platforms. And the key point is the $1.4 trillion lawsuit.
This is just, it's absolutely mind-boggling. And as a psychiatrist, what strikes me is the concept and reality of addiction, which is what I work with. I'm an addiction psychiatrist and I'm medical director of a methadone clinic, is the way the concept, again, and reality of addiction is being distorted to further the aims of the plaintiffs. There may be other reasons to sue and maybe liability in terms of misrepresentation that I'm not, misrepresentation of potential harms. That's not what I'm interested in. I'm interested in the way they invoke brain science at the most superficial level, as you might imagine, the way also they reify addiction as something that is a behavior that is beyond control. And if that were true, my patients would never get better.

**Andrew Keen** (4:26)
Yeah, so let's remind ourselves of this case. It involved a woman called, quote unquote, Kaley, who was awarded $6 million, shared between Meta and YouTube, Google, although most of it came from Facebook. As you say, not a lot of money. And it was about the idea that she was addicted to social media and essentially ruined her life.
Tell me about Kaley and why you're slightly skeptical of the arguments made on her behalf and others in this case.

**Sally Satel** (4:59)
Well, there are several. The first is that she was... Okay, so her allegation successful is that she was harmed by the design features of these platforms.
And that the nature of the harm, kind of the mechanism was an addiction, meaning she could not control herself and she was exposed to the point of damage. And the issue with her and with so many young kids who are in these situations is that they have fragilities and vulnerabilities that predate their exposure to the platforms. And that in and of themselves could cause the damage that she's alleging, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, body dysmorphia.
And you can also have an intermediate kind of situation where she was vulnerable to begin with and her interaction with the medium made things worse. It is interesting, however, that she says her future plans are to be on the, be an influencer. So obviously, she also finds this social media also a gratifying and productive thing for her. But she did start using when she was very young. Of course, you wouldn't wonder where the parents were. And her history was not very healthy. Her parents were highly critical of her. She was very unhappy. But interestingly, her two therapists testified And one said that the issue of social media as an irritant of her life rarely even came up. And the other said that it did come up, but it was very much embedded in a lot of other contextual matters, the way her parents were treating her, her obsession with her, her appearance, and how she got involved with, now I forget, it was some beautification app, you know, and very self-conscious. So, it's a very complicated pictures. And it's not a surprise that the people who have the most, who claim the most damage in these cases, are people who walk into these situations already with some difficulties.