Do you think social media companies should be held legally responsible for the recent uptick in US students experiencing mental health problems?

👍 Yes (45%) – "We don't let tobacco companies market to minors because they're more susceptible, why should psychologically addictive products be treated any different."

• "Because students are obsessed with who is on, who is saying or posting what. They don’t know how to sit with their thoughts. This leads to high anxiety, lack of worth and an ineptitude to hold a real conversation."

"I have personally witnessed the impact of these horrific social media site on high school teenagers. In 2020-2021, there was a Tik Tok challenge sent to kids to slap a teacher and destroy the school bathrooms! Unfortunately, there were students who met those challenges. I am afraid this will normalize student behavior and set inappropriate moral values."

• "I have seen firsthand how school-aged children are being impacted by social media platforms as it’s become they prime mode of communication for many kids and most of those interactions are unregulated and lack adult supervision. The internet is a very powerful tool that should be restricted for certain age groups."

"Social media companies design their service to maximize the very thing that is damaging it's users. It's like cigarette companies - they need to be held responsible for the impact of their products."

👎 No (38%) – "I'm not a fan of how much social media students are consuming, but it isn't the responsibility of the companies to monitor. It is the responsibility of parents who seem to have abdicated their parenting responsibility to schools and social media."

• "Correlation does not equal causation. It may be a contributing factor to mental health problems – but so is a laundry list of other things that no one seems willing to take personal or familial responsibility for. Like other known legal, addictive substances - sugar, caffeine, TV, video games - it should be up to the parents to determine that thing isn't good in excess and set a limit for their kids."

"This is simply a ploy to get money from these companies, while simultaneously "identifying" a reason why US children are relatively malaised compared with previous generations. It innately satisfies humans (particularly politicians) to attribute issues to one factor, unrealistically simplifying the issue and making it seem easy to solve. We know that, in reality, there are hundreds of factors contributing to the mental and physical well-being of children and teenagers."

• "The lawsuit is ridiculous. This is simply businesses trying to create profit. If your teen gets caught up, too bad. Business and profit is the priority in America. Having us addicted to their product is the POINT of having consumers."

🤷 Unsure/other (17%) – "I think social media companies should be held responsible for engineering their apps in such a way to make them as addictive as possible. The fact that they do this is an open secret. But I think parents/guardians should be held responsible as well because they are the primary caregivers for their children. Who buys that first smartphone? Who lets the kids have devices (computers, tablets, etc) in their bedrooms? Who should be monitoring the content their kids consume and making sure the kids consume responsibly?"