Ep 180 | Social Media: Holding big tech accountable

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When your kid is on social media, it's like a digital footprint. Like every interaction that they have is being tracked.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to the Voices United in Education podcast. Each week, we showcase the teachers, administrators, and community members who go the extra mile to contribute to the success of every child in Escambia County. You'll meet the real people behind the titles and learn about the amazing resources to support your child's success. The impact is not only felt by parents, but also schools, requiring additional counselors and time to take disciplinary measures and educate students and staff. My next guest believes that these costs should be covered by the big tech social media companies that profit off of your students. She is an attorney at Levin Papantonio Rafferty and the court-appointed leadership in the federal social media addiction litigation. Today she's going to share why the firm is taking social media seriously and why you should too. Protecting the next generation, advocating for change, and seeking accountability, Emmy Paulos. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much for having me. So I think we should probably start out by kind of laying out the who, what, win, how of this lawsuit. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

So this is kind of a state-of-the-art lawsuit. It's one of the first lawsuits that has successfully excelled against social media platform. Essentially, it's the social media adolescent addiction litigation. It is centralized, meaning it's been consolidated before one judge in the Northern District of California, and that's Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. And she is overseeing the litigation on the multi-district litigation side, so the federal side. There's also sister litigation for state court cases that is in California as well, which is in the JCCP. And these litigations are working together, kind of hand in hand. And essentially, what we are doing in this litigation is we are working to hold social media companies accountable for creating an unreasonably dangerous product due to the addictive architecture of social media platforms. And this addictive architecture is what is fueling kind of this mental health crisis and epidemic that we are seeing with youth throughout our nation.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

I want to dig into that architecture a little bit more in detail later, but help me understand consolidation of cases. How many cases are we talking about?

SPEAKER_00 2:50

So there are several thousand cases that are currently filed, and there are separate tracks. So you have your personal injury cases, which are parents that are filing on behalf of their children that have been harmed through their use of social media. You have a government entity track where states are actually also suing the social media companies for harms that are happening nationwide through all the various states. And there's also a track for the school districts as well. School districts are bringing their claims for the harms that they're experiencing as an after-effect of the social media addictive usage.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

So why a lawsuit? Why not legislative change? As we're recording this, Australia just announced that all social media use for people under 16 is not allowed. I don't know what your opinion is on the efficacy of that kind of approach, but I'm curious to hear why in this case you decided to go the lawsuit route and not like lobbying for rules to be changed like Australia did.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Sure. It's a dual effort. There's a lot of lobbying that's happening to get rules and laws in place to protect kids and to put limitations on how social media is used. But there's also the litigation side, which sometimes can be a quicker route to get to the defendants to really highlight this is a problem and there's something that needs to be done. So we're really kind of attacking from both angles.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

When you were saying that the consolidated lawsuits include individuals and school districts combined, what are some of the examples that we can pull out of that? What's happening to these individuals that they are going, you know what? Litigation is long, complicated, expensive. It's taxing, but we're gonna do it. Like how bad is it?

SPEAKER_00 4:40

It's really bad. I mean, just if you kind of look at society in general and the increase in mental health issues amongst youth, it's skyrocketing and it's continued to excel rapidly since the pandemic. And during the pandemic, I think that would be a perfect example. Kids were isolated, they weren't in school, they weren't participating in their extracurricular activities. So they turned to social media for that social interaction. And you kind of see kind of an uptick of how all of these various mental health issues started to arise soon afterwards. Can you give a specific examples? Sure. So they're pretty broad. You have your eating disorder cases, body dysmorphia would be one kind of subset of cases. Then you have your mental harm cases like depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, self-harm. And then you have your behavioral aspect as well, like how it affects the behavior of children in terms of your home dynamic, kids being so absorbed in social media that they're not really participating and aware of what's happening around them. The effects at school, grades going down, truancy. So I would say it kind of falls into kind of your what's happening with the eating disorders and what's happening with mental health, and then kind of with the behavioral changes that we're seeing amongst adolescents.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

No one denies that this stuff is a problem, but in a court situation, the burden of proof is a little bit higher than like mom or dad or grandma or grandpa being like, yeah, Johnny's got an issue. How do you quantify that? How do you showcase that it is, in fact, social media causing these problems? And it's not just kids these days.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

It's a complex road. There's multiple layers to it. We go through extensive discovery with the defendants and we get to take a look at their internal documents and what they knew and what notice they had. And that helps frame the story, right? Did they know? Were they doing anything about it? Were they not doing something about it? And so you have that aspect of it. And then you have the testimony of the family and the child and what they're experiencing, and you have their records. You're able to go into their social media devices and do a forensic pool and see how much time they spend, who they're communicating with, the type of content that they're being exposed to. And that puts together a narrative that really showcases kind of the trajectory of what happened. And then we also utilize experts in the field, psychologists, neurologists that will come in and they will explain to the jury how addiction works, why social media is addicting, and give their opinions on the impact that social media use had on that particular child. What are they saying about its impact? I mean, the impact is astounding. We are seeing just concerns about mental health like apps kind of skyrocketing. The experts have been in their own practice noticing there's been a change in what's happening. And a lot of that stems from how kids are using social media, what they see on social media, how they're interacting, how much time they spend on social media. And that's having a trickle effect in just their well-being. And that's becoming more and more evident now that the issue's becoming more prominent because you have to think back 10, 15 years, the social media that first came out was significantly different than it is today. And I feel like society is catching up to that. And a lot of people just didn't know, right? They just didn't know because they don't understand it or they haven't interacted with it, right? But it's excelled and now we're catching up. The science is catching up. But a lot of the psychologists and psychiatrists that I've talked to are seeing the impact firsthand, working with their patients. How much time are kids spending every day on social media? It varies. I've heard of kids that spend basically all day on social media, not like collectively 24 hours straight, but they're always getting a notification, picking up their phone, sending a message, scrolling. It's just something that's easily accessible. It helps get past boredom. And it kind of becomes a habit, right? And you don't even think about it and you're doing it. And so looking through some of my clients, I'll have clients that have checked their social media up to a hundred times a day. And you think to yourself, well, there's not that much time in the day. How can that be? But it's every single interaction. And every single interaction is distracting that child from the present, what's happening right now, right? So there's a lot of skull on thought about how much social media is too much social media. You'll hear three hours throughout the day across all the platforms is considered addictive or problematic. You'll hear two hours. It's really child specific. And I don't think you could really define it by a time. But essentially how it's working is the goal of these social media platforms is to increase engagement, right? And they're going to continue to show content in the hopes that that usage and those minutes keep ticking up. And when kids start using social media, that addictive cycle could happen really quickly and unsuspectingly. Because at first, being exposed to all of this information and content, and you're liking what you're seeing, and it makes you feel good. It's that reward loop, right? And you get a little bit of a dopamine rush and you are like, oh, this feels good. I want to see more of this. And then the platforms try to test out. Well, what if we show them something different? You know, and sometimes that something different can be something you don't want your child to be looking at, not something that the child searched for or is seeking, but the child just naturally sees it and it's like curious about it and wants to know what it is. And I think the best analogy, real world analogy that I could give as an example is the wow effect. For example, you're driving on the interstate and there's an accident. What does everyone do? Everyone slows down to look. It's not because they want to see someone hurt, it's that curiosity, right? Novelty. And novelty. And same thing with the content. And so a child will see something where maybe they don't want to see it and maybe they even find it disturbing, but they interact with it and it increases their usage. And slowly they'll start seeing more and more of that type of content. And with the hopes that's going to drive usage. And eventually what ends up happening is the cessation that you would get after five minutes of using social media doesn't work anymore. And then it increases to 10 minutes because you're trying to get that same kind of feel-good receptors, right? And then it continues to increase and continues to increase where it just gets more and more because you're not getting what you originally were getting and what you want, what you're seeking. And it kind of spirals out of control from that.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

In your website says that Meta executive Mickey Rothschild had a court order dealing with sealing parts of her testimony about Meta's policies and decisions regarding the addictive product design. And I want to ask you first of all two questions. One is I want to know what you learned from her. And then the second thing I want to know is I don't think most people understand that. And correct me if I'm wrong, when you're scrolling, let's say Instagram, if you slow down to look at a post, the app registers that. You're spot on. Okay. Yeah. So I just wanted to lay that foundation in case people didn't know, because I think people have a general understanding. Okay, YouTube is owned by Google and Google, it's a lot, right? They don't really have strong privacy ethics. That's not how it works. But I don't think they understand the depth at which the app is looking at you, you might say. So how deep does that go? And what did you learn from Mickey Rothschild in Discovery that people would be surprised to know about?

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Great question. So I could kind of give you a broad overview. I can't really go into the details of what we learned through spill as much tea or as little as tea as you want. Since it is an ongoing litigation and we do have obligations of confidentiality. But just in general, what I can say is that most social media companies have known that their product is addicting. They've researched it internally, they've researched it externally. It's really no secret. So they've been aware about this for quite some time, but despite knowing this, no proactive action was done to remedy that. They continue just doing what they were doing, right? And kind of sweeping it under the rug. Okay, yeah, it's harmful for kids. Yeah, kids are more depressed, have more anxiety, kids are addicted. Our personal studies show that. Research done independently showed that, but really nothing proactively was done about it. And now that's kind of through this litigation. And as we get closer to trial, a lot of that information is going to be more public knowledge. So we're getting there. We're definitely getting there. To your second point, yes, you are absolutely right. And a lot of parents don't realize that. But when your kid is on social media, it's like a digital footprint. Like every interaction that they have is being tracked. Every post that they interact with, how much time they spend, you know, how quickly they scroll to the next one, you're absolutely right. That is all being tracked.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

How deep does that go? Because I've heard, and I don't know if this is true or not, but I've heard that when, say, let's use Facebook, a parent post a photo of a sonogram on Facebook, or maybe like those newborn pics where the baby's all like a little burrito, so cute. Facebook's like, oh, a new person. We are opening up a new file, if you will, for this new person, and we're creating part of that electronic footprint for that person. Is that true?

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Um, kind of. You know, to kind of expand on your example, yeah. So they realize that there's a new life event that's happening, right? And they're gonna curate that feed for the parent to align with that new event. So all of a sudden, the parent is gonna see more content that has to do about parenting, motherhood, newborns. And additionally, they're gonna see a lot more advertising as well, geared towards becoming a new mom and all the technology that you need and all of the accessories and whatnot. So it is creating, it's feeding off of what you're giving it and then expanding on it and building that file, and that file continues to build. I think one thing that you may be hinting at is kind of the interplay of interactions on social media. So, how social media is set up is you don't need to have someone in your social circle for that person to become a friend of yours, right? They don't have to be in your immediate social circle. You don't even have to know them, but they can be suggested to you, right? As quick ads or suggested friend. And how we're seeing that really negatively impact kids is a lot of children are getting suggestions to add adults that they have nothing in common with, no connection. And kids want to be popular and they want to grow their friends' number. And so they add a bunch of people that they don't know, and they basically sharing all of their intimate moments in their life with a bunch of strangers, but also those strangers can have very negative intentions for the kids and try to groom them. And you see a lot of examples like that in the headlines, like they meet the predator through social media, and that's kind of how it happens. It's not that the child is seeking out that interaction, but that interaction is being suggested to the child, right? And that's how the connection is made. It's very scary.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

The thing that's opened my eyes the most to how social media is impacting kids is talking to kids about social media. Do you have any suggestions for parents? You're a parent, right? Yes. So give us some like strategies. How do we talk to our kids about social media without them feeling like we're baiting them? Like, you know, you're gonna tell me something and then you're gonna be grounded, and I'm gonna take away your phone. How do we inspire that honesty and transparency from kids about what's going on in their digital lives?

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Yeah, it is a lot about digital responsibility. And I think one thing to do is try to delay access to phones and social media for as long as possible. How long is long?

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Because when you say that, then the listener's like, I did a good job because they were seven. My kid was seven. Yeah. And then other people are like, 17.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

So what is a good number? I would say the sweet spot is somewhere between 13 and 16. And if you can get past 13, you're doing great. Okay. It's hard though. It's hard because really for that to work, you don't want to be that one parent that stands out and your child is the only one that doesn't have access to a phone, but all of their peers do, right? It would help if families came together and band together, right? And it was a concerted effort together and had a pack that okay, we're all going to hold out until our kid turns 13.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

I'm so glad that you brought that up because I just talked to someone, he's a former NBC correspondent who used his journalistic powers to basically research AI and he wrote this book about it. And he says that's was his strategy with his girls, is that they had a nice little community of friends, and then him and his wife knew the friends' mom and dads and everything. And they got together and they were like, all right, team huddle, this is what we're gonna do. Let's make a pact, no phones by 15 or whatever the number was. And so they created like a microculture of digital responsibility, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Right. That's the way to do it because then no one's the bad guy, right? Everyone's band together. So that's one great suggestion. And you know, if it works out, that's great. Other things that you could do, I think just having open conversations about using technology responsibly. And when you're raising a child, you're teaching them about stranger danger, but you're telling them outside of the home. But now that stranger danger can infiltrate your home where you think your kid is safe through the phone and through access to social media. So educating them that you have to be careful. There's bad people out there, and you have to be aware of that. Educating them about whatever you put on social media, unfortunately, is there. And once it's out, you're really never gonna get it back. So be careful and be mindful about what you're sharing. Keep your settings all private. Limit your friend group just to people that you know, to your actual friends. Once a parent agrees, yes, you could use social media. I mean, unfortunately, the parent has to kind of snoop and see what's happening. Like who is on their friend list? And if they see someone that they don't know, ask them who is this person? Why is this person your friend? Right. I think those are some good tips.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Sometimes it's not the bad guys necessarily. You and I both grew up with the white van, you know, the good guys and the bad guys. But I was talking with, let's see, I think she's 15 or 16 a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about social media and mental health. And she said, My friends do unboxing videos of all their Christmas gifts. And I said, I'm sorry, what? She said, Yeah, these girls, they're from wealthy families, and they set up their camera and they, for however many minutes, a long time, go through every single one of their gifts on camera for everyone and just show what they got. And so it creates for her, she was sharing this ickiness, a sense of comparison, a sense of missing out. It's causing her distress, but that's her in real life friend. So it's so confusing because that's not a bad guy in a white van.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Right. Yeah. No, exactly. I think explaining that kind of what you see online isn't necessarily the real deal. Like you hear about all these influencers and they're showing these snippets of this glamorous lifestyle, and then you look behind the scenes and it's just all a facade, right? And you're seeing a lot more influence. Like taking their role seriously and being a lot more transparent and like taking down the filter and saying, hey, this is what I look like in real life. This is all lights and a ton of makeup and I look glamorous, but this isn't reality. Like I wake up every day and this is how I look. And so telling your kids what you see online isn't necessarily true, which is a little different in the scenario that you just described, because this is people that they know. And yeah, you're gonna see people that have more privilege than you and kind of be like, wow, that sucks. And it's hard, right? And it comes in every aspect of life before social media, it'd be like the kid driving up with a brand new car, right? And so parents just need to say, hey, you've got to focus on yourself. Don't compare yourself to other people. You don't know what that person is going through, right? Yeah, it looks great and they get awesome gifts, but you're just as awesome in the way you are, right? And just helping them just have the affirmations to feel good about themselves, but it's very difficult. It's very difficult. And even as adults, we're susceptible to it. So imagine kids, right? I mean, and trying to explain that to them. But I think just explaining digital well-being to kids and setting boundaries, just having boundaries, modeling parents need to model, you know, good use of technology. And when you're having dinner, everyone puts their phone away. When they go to bed, you don't get your phone, you can't scroll all night. But you know, as a parent, you also have to take some accountability and model that behavior. So the child sees it. If a child sees a parent like constantly on the phone, that's gonna be an expectation that that's normal. So that does get difficult for sure.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

I mean, you're hitting all the good things though. Yeah, do as I say, not as I do a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Which is hard. Which is hard.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

It is hard, but I think this litigation is showing that these issues are not made up. And I think part of the reason why we have a problem accepting that these products are designed to be addictive is because in the US, we have a real love affair with individual responsibility and personal choice. Like at the end of the day, have you how many times have you heard this? At the end of the day, it's your choice to do X or Y. But the truth is that some of our choices are manipulated. And for young people whose brains aren't fully developed, that can cause permanent damage. So I'd love to know how the first injury trial went right on the website happened just November 2025. Okay. How did it go?

SPEAKER_00 24:38

So it did get postponed, unfortunately, but there's a lot of work that needed to be done leading up to the case. So that's actually a good thing, but it has been postponed. So the first personal injury case that's going to trial is now currently set for the end of January. And so we are in pretrial mode right now and anticipating and hoping for a great outcome. We're excited to be able to get out there and share the story and really put the case together so everyone can see kind of the full picture of everything that's been done over the last several years leading up to where we are today.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Yeah. Well, your firm has a real good history of being a cultural change maker, right? With big tobacco, with human trafficking. I mean, it's interesting the societal ills that y'all have taken on. What would you consider an ideal outcome for that lawsuit?

SPEAKER_00 25:36

I mean, I think an ideal outcome would be a plaintiff's verdict, obviously, because that really kind of solidifies everything that we've done. But I think in the long run, it's really putting the story out there and having the social media companies be accountable for the harms that they've caused. And through litigation, that's one avenue of being able to do that. And we hope overall that this is just gonna cause like a systemic change to how these companies operate.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Yeah. And as we wrap up, my last question is why does this matter to you personally?

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Oh my goodness, on so many levels. Looking at what's happening in society and talking to my clients about their experiences, it's just gut-wrenching to hear how they're spiraling and what they're going through. And I feel like just childhood is difficult as it is, right? Minus social media and everything else that they're facing right now. And this is just one additional issue that society and kids have to deal with. And it's really hard. It's hard. And I think technology could be a good thing, obviously, but it needs to be used in a way that's respectful and not harmful. And just seeing the harm that's happened to kids since social media blew up, it really just tugs on my heartstrings of well, what can I do, right? To make a change. How can I be a voice for these kids? Because a lot of them are just helpless, you know, and that's kind of the heart and drive behind getting involved in this litigation. Because at the end of the day, I hope that through this, more kids in the future will just be better off because of it, right? Because there'll be changes and it will help future generations. And so really that's kind of the drive behind the litigation.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking time out to share the update with us. I'm going to link the timeline that you have on the website of this has happened in November, this has happened in December, so that people can essentially cheer you guys on and kind of see where it's going because sometimes those things don't make headlines. And we need to know that there are champions fighting behind the scenes to make a difference. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

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