Afterschool programs offer an antidote to social media harms. Big Tech settlements should foot the bill.

Photo courtesy of Children’s Funding Project

By Elizabeth Gaines, founder and CEO of Children’s Funding Project. This blog was originally published on the Children’s Funding Project website on November 11, 2024. It has been reposted with permission.

About eight years ago I started to notice a trend that you may have seen in yourself. I would sometimes find myself unable to stop scrolling through Facebook on my phone. It would eventually hit me, what I was doing, and I’d throw the phone down. My son was about 16 at the time and I worried about his time on screens, too. It was then that I started hearing about the concerning claims coming from some former high-profile social media company employees who were revealing that maybe this wasn’t a “me” problem but, in fact, a problem with the technology. Social media companies were intentionally making their products addictive, and targeting adolescents. This is not a new theme for corporations and their desire to acquire more buyers or users. We’ve seen it with the manufacturers of  tobacco, opioids, and ultra-processed foods.

And now, for all of us who care about young people, it’s hard to ignore the big debate playing out among researchers and in the media: Is social media causing a youth mental health crisis?

As a mom, I have my own opinions on this question—we all do. But as the founder and leader of an organization committed to helping all children thrive by ensuring that communities can provide the comprehensive programs and services they need, my official answer to this question is this: Right now, taking sides on this question is distracting us from what we need to do together to channel resources toward what we know kids need.

From young people to parents, to researchers, legislators, and social media companies, there are a few truths we can all agree on:

• We know kids are not OK. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey shows that in 2023, 4 in 10 high school students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, 2 in 10 students seriously considered attempting suicide, and almost 1 in 10 students attempted suicide—all increases since 2013. The U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has called the increase in youth mental health needs “the defining public health crisis of our time,” issuing official public health advisories on youth mental health in both 2021 and 2023.
   
• We know that social media companies made their products intentionally addictive. Facebook’s former director of monetization has admitted that getting users to pay attention to the product for longer and longer each day is part of the company’s business model. At a congressional hearing held by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, he likened the platform’s features (status updates, photo tagging, and likes) to the addictive add-ons that tobacco companies used to grow their business. Other social media executives have shared similar sentiments, including that they do not allow their own children to use social media.
   
• We know social media companies have made incredible profits from young people’s engagement. In 2022 alone, social media companies made almost $11 billion in advertisement revenue from users younger than age 18, according to a study from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The same study indicates that YouTube made $959.1 million in ad revenue from users ages 12 and younger in just one year. Because these companies make the majority of their profits from ads, their success depends on maximizing the amount of time users spend on their platforms. Social media companies collect endless amounts of data from young people and then monetize their time and attention through selling targeted advertising.
   
• We know that 42 states, the District of Columbia, and hundreds of school districts, local governments, and individuals have sued social media companies for allegedly harming young people’s mental, emotional, and physical health. Plaintiffs claim that the social media companies designed their platforms to maximize screen time, which fostered addictive behavior among teens and resulted in emotional and physical harms, including death. Defendants include Meta Platforms, Inc.; Instagram LLC; Snap, Inc.; TikTok, Inc.; ByteDance, Inc.; YouTube LLC; Google LLC; and Alphabet Inc. Lawsuits have been consolidated into Multidistrict Litigation MDL 3047 and assigned to Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the United States District Court’s Northern District of California, with a parallel track of cases consolidated into Judicial Counsel Coordination Proceeding (JCCP) No 5255 and assigned to Judge Carolyn Kuhl of the County of Los Angeles Central District Superior Court.
   
• We know what works for kids’ well-being. There is no debate that participating in quality structured positive youth development programs in out-of-school time hours is good for kids, especially in the age of social media. According to Afterschool Alliance, “Afterschool and summer programs play an essential role in supporting the healthy development of young people by serving as a safe space that fosters belonging, develops supportive relationships with peers and adult mentors, encourages healthy behaviors, and helps young people build and cultivate the skills necessary to navigate through the struggles and challenges they may come up against in life.” There is a deep evidence base that afterschool programs promote positive social, emotional, and academic outcomes and protect against risky behaviors such as addiction, bullying, and violent activities.
   
• We know afterschool programs are deeply underfunded and access is inequitable. Nearly 25 million young people aren’t able to access afterschool programs, even though they want to participate in one. Despite this all-time high demand for programs—and overwhelming support for afterschool activities from voters of all political parties—federal funding for these programs has largely stalled during the last 20 years. This persistent lack of program funding creates wide disparities between children from different socioeconomic backgrounds when children from high-income families can afford quality afterschool programs and children from lower-income families can’t. According to Afterschool Alliance, families in the highest income bracket spend five times more on out-of-school time activities each year than families in the lowest income bracket. And, as the pandemic made so clear, when child care isn’t an option, screen time fills the gap. Additionally, the talented people who work in afterschool programs often cannot stay in those positions if they want to start a family or own a home; they simply don’t pay enough.

At Children’s Funding Project we believe that any money that comes from a potential legal settlement from the current social media litigation should be reinvested into youth programs and used to remediate the harms young people have experienced. There are dynamic, creative, evidence-based youth development programs working on shoestring budgets that require resources to make their programs available to all kids and to treat those programs as a public good. Local organizations like DC Action are working to pass legislation to make universal access to afterschool programs a reality in their communities. We want this in every community for every child. These types of programs are the antidote to the feelings of loneliness, isolation, disconnection, and other harms our young people have experienced.

History from tobacco and opioid settlements suggests that there could be a major settlement from current litigation against social media companies. In theory, these funds should go toward activities and services that would abate social media addiction and support youth mental health. But we also know from past litigation against tobacco and opioid companies that the money doesn’t always go where it should. I saw this first hand as a young advocate in my home state in Missouri, trying to secure tobacco settlement dollars for youth development programs. It was an uphill battle against big time lobbyists, but we managed to convince the state legislature to set aside $20 million for kids only to have those dollars withheld by the governor during a bad budget year and used to replace other sources of funding.  We will have to be steadfast to ensure these dollars are dedicated and protected for our kids.

If there is a social media settlement, shouldn’t that money go toward the programs and activities we know work for young people? Wouldn’t out-of-school time programs be a worthy recipient of settlement funds for their proven ability to promote mental well-being and protect against risky behaviors? Of course, things like digital literacy play a role too, just like we’ve seen drug and teen pregnancy curricula do over the years. But we cannot miss the opportunity to make sure funds get to the steady state, asset building, prevention programs that all young people deserve, once and for all. We can’t talk about the issue of social media and youth mental health without acknowledging that afterschool programs offer a solution.

If you’re interested in staying involved, join our coalition of partners and individuals committed to investing potential settlement dollars in positive youth development programs. If you have stories to share about social media, youth mental health, and the value of youth programs, please contact us.