Meta, minors and the business of addiction: how platforms engineer your attention, why it pays, and who should stop it.
Maxted Neal
You will answer in the chat at every step, and take a side at the end.
Explain how four psychological effects capture attention.
Identify the platform feature that uses each effect.
Explain why more of your time earns a free app money.
Evaluate whether governments should ban addictive design for under-18s.
Psychology: four effects, and the features built on them.
A schematic drawing, not a screenshot of a real app. Sources: Montag, Lachmann, Herrlich and Zweig (2019), section 3.1; Amirthalingam and Khera (2024).
A schematic drawing. Sources: Montag et al. (2019), section 3.5, citing Sherman et al. (2016); Amirthalingam and Khera (2024).
A schematic drawing. Sources: Amirthalingam and Khera (2024), citing Chou and Edge (2012); Montag et al. (2019); Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (2026).
A schematic drawing; on the real app the read ticks turn blue. Source: Montag et al. (2019), section 3.3.
Follow the money from your screen to the platform's revenue.
The features you have just seen keep users occupied as long as possible.
Every extra minute adds to the personal data the platform can harvest.
More data makes ads more precisely matched to each person.
Personalised ads boost clicks and buys, so revenue tends to rise.
The app is free because you pay with your data rather than with money.
Source: Montag et al. (2019), section 2, citing Matz et al. (2017) on personalised ads.
The Meta settlement, why regulation lags, and a vote.
The states claimed Meta built Facebook and Instagram to keep young people hooked, and misled the public about the risks. Meta admitted no wrongdoing.
Source: Thrul and Mendelson, interviewed by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 16 September 2026.
Independent scientists rarely get platform data, so no one outside can measure what each feature does.
Platforms A/B test new versions of features on users, mostly unsolicited.
Problematic use is linked to anxiety and depression; whether social media causes them is open.
Sources: Montag et al. (2019), sections 4 and 5; Thrul and Mendelson, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (2026).
F for · A against · U unsure
Montag, Lachmann, Herrlich and Zweig (2019). Addictive features of social media/messenger platforms and freemium games. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health.
Amirthalingam and Khera (2024). Understanding social media addiction: a deep dive. Cureus.
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (2026). How the $17 billion Meta settlement could reshape mental health research and policy.
One lens explains the feature, one explains the incentive, one decides what happens next.
Type A or B.