The Dangers of Regulation

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There has been an overall general decrease in young people's mental well-being. Orban says it can be connected to many things and probably is connected to manythings. Social media might be a small contributor in the overall decline in mental health in young people. But she says it's also become a convenient scapegoat, a kind of technological panic. The danger is that if we're regulating without properly understanding the problem we're trying to address, we can end up missing the root cause.

There’s a growing feeling that social media is bad for us: bad for society and bad for our wellbeing. That trend has culminated in a new wave of legislation in the United States aiming to address social media’s impact on young people’s mental health. But in this episode, Elaine Moore, deputy editor of the FT’s Lex column, looks at some of the unanswered questions over whether social media really causes us harm, and what legislation will mean for the future of the social media business model. Are we in the throws of a technological panic?

In this episode, the third in a series on social media, Elaine speaks to Emma Lembke, co-founder of youth advocacy group Log Off; Katie Paul, director at the Tech Transparency Project; Amy Orben, head of the Digital Mental Health Group at the University of Cambridge; and FT tech reporter Hannah Murphy.

Since the publication of Katie Paul’s investigation into the trade of looted Middle Eastern antiquities on Facebook, Meta has changed its policy on the sale of historical artefacts.

Presented by Elaine Moore. Produced by Edwin Lane and Josh Gabert-Doyon, Executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Sound design by Breen Turner and Samantha Giovinco. Original music by Metaphor Music. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.

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Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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