‘Problematic use’ but not an addiction, says Meta app boss – Firstpost

The issue of social media addiction has found a platform in a court in Los Angeles, where executives from the biggest tech companies are facing tough questions at a time when more and more countries are joining the ranks of Australia in attempting to ban social media for under-16s.

Amid this, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has come to the spotlight for his belief that social media addiction cannot be clinical in nature. Instagram’s parent company, Meta and Google’s YouTube face claims that their platforms deliberately addict and harm children. TikTok and Snap, which were originally named in the lawsuit, settled for undisclosed sums.

Here are the most notable things Mosseri said from the trial:

• Mosseri, who has headed Instagram for eight years, noted that there is a clear difference between clinical addiction and what he called “problematic use”

• Replying to this, the plaintiff’s lawyer presented quotes directly taken from a podcast where the Instagram chief used the term addiction in relation to social media use. Mosseri, however, described his interview statement as a “casual comment”

• Mosseri said he was not claiming to be a medical expert when questioned about his qualifications to comment on the legitimacy of social media addiction, but said someone “very close” to him has experienced serious clinical addiction, which is why he said he was “being careful with my words”

• He said he and his colleagues use the term “problematic use” to refer to “someone spending more time on Instagram than they feel good about, and that definitely happens”

• Mosseri said that the social media platform is striving “to be as safe as possible but also censor as little as possible”

• Mosseri and the plaintiff’s lawyer, Mark Lanier, engaged in a lengthy back-and-forth about cosmetic filters on Instagram that changed people’s appearance in a way that seemed to promote plastic surgery