In the wake of a guilty verdict in the social media addiction case against YouTube and Meta, in which TikTok and Snapchat settled before trial, there is a growing pushback against the whole idea of smartphone addiction.

In “The Case Against Social Media Addiction,” Adam Omary, a research fellow at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute who specializes in mental health trends, along with his colleague, Jeffrey A. Singer, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute specializing in health policy, make a strong case for caution in applying the label “addiction” to smartphone activity:

[…] when diagnosis is subjective and payment depends on diagnosis, the system will predictably expand the boundaries of illness. Social media addiction is poised to become the next case study in that dynamic, with consequences that extend well beyond health care spending into the domains of free speech, privacy, and innovation.

The authors explain that the amount of time spent on a smartphone does not equate with addiction. They describe how habits and dependencies are different from addictions, and this difference is important. They cite the American Society of Addiction Medicine’s definition of addiction as an activity that continues despite being harmful to oneself.

Under this definition, doctors would have to find that the use of the smartphone was harming the patient. People who are on their phones all the time, but don’t feel particularly harmed by that activity, would not be considered addicted, even if they have withdrawal symptoms when separated from their phones. They might say they are addicted to their phones, but that is a casual and largely inaccurate label.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is even stricter on the definition of addiction. It must be a behavior that is causing harm and that the sufferer wants to curtail but has difficulty doing so. This implies a desire to quit on the part of the patient. If smartphone users have no desire to curtail their use, it can’t really be considered an addiction.

The word is important, as the Cato authors point out: “[…] ‘addiction’ is not a neutral word — it has specific consequences enshrined in policy. Once applied, it unlocks diagnosis codes, insurance payments, treatment industries, lawsuits, and regulation.” They point out that habits and dependencies don’t require billing codes. The law almost guarantees that treating social media addiction will become a giant industry:

A recognized social media addiction diagnosis would trigger insurance coverage under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, which requires health plans, including Medicaid managed care, to cover behavioral health services at parity with medical and surgical services.

The authors then point to the terrible quality of the research done so far on social media addiction. It is, indeed, a Wild West of studies with no common definitions or workable scales with which to measure smartphone addiction. There is no agreement on whether it is internet addiction, phone addiction, social media addiction, AI addiction, or some other excessive use compulsion.

Another researcher taking a swing at the misdiagnosis of social media addiction is Dar Meshi, an associate professor of advertising and public relations at Michigan State University. In an article for the scientific journal, Nature, Meshi outlined the case against a diagnosis of social media addiction.

Meshi points out that social media use has proven to be beneficial to well-being. This complicates the calculus on whether labeling excessive use as an addiction would result in more harm than good. He does believe that establishing social media addiction as a disorder would require medical professionals to develop reliable diagnostics and treatment recommendations:

[F]ormally designating social media use as an addiction would provide mental health practitioners with standard diagnostic criteria, thus improving screening and the development of treatments. It would also give researchers guidelines for categorizing study participants, making addiction research more robust.

Like the Cato authors, Meshi laments the near-total lack of standards when it comes to measuring and classifying social media addiction. We’ll give him the last word on the subject:

There’s an urgent need for better information about what constitutes social media addiction. Its existence should not be debated in the courts and by jurors, but by trained experts, determined by data.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published April 24, 2026.

Sources:

“The Case Against Social Media ‘Addiction’,” Cato Institute, April 16, 2026.

“Is social media addictive? Why a formal diagnosis is still out of reach,” Nature, April 1, 2026.

“Jury ruling sharpens questions over when heavy social media use becomes addiction,” MedicalXpress, April 15, 2026.

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