Is Big Tech Responsible for a Youth Mental Health Crisis?

Is social media the new Big Tobacco or is it simply the price of living in a hyper connected world? 

Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele dive into the mounting legal and societal backlash against social media giants like Meta, TikTok, and Snapchat, exploring whether these platforms are fueling a youth mental health crisis—and if governments and courts can do anything about it. 

From Australia’s sweeping ban on social media for children under 16 to Canada’s proposed legislation and billion-dollar lawsuits launched by school boards, the hosts unpack the evolving legal strategies, including the bold attempt to stretch the tort of public nuisance to cover digital harm. 

They question whether causation between social media and mental health struggles can truly be proven, compare the issue to tobacco litigation, and examine the added complexity of AI-driven algorithms and echo chambers. 

As technology accelerates beyond the reach of traditional regulation, this episode asks the pressing question: Can real-world laws meaningfully govern a borderless digital world?
 
 Listen For:

1:40 How Has Social Media Changed Childhood Compared to Previous Generations?
8:23 Is Social Media Driving a Mental Health Crisis Among Teens?
9:55 What Are Governments Doing to Ban or Regulate Social Media for Children?
14:29 Why Is the Toronto District School Board Suing Social Media Companies?
21:41 Can Social Media Be Legally Defined as Addictive Like Tobacco?
 

Leave a rating/review for this podcast with one click

Contact Us

Gardiner Roberts website | Gavin email | Stephen email  

Transcript

Gavin Tighe (00:00):

I do think the legislative approaches to this issue may be too little too late. And I think that ultimately I don't know that you can stop the freight train of technology with legislative mandates. Hello and welcome to Beneath the Law. My name's Gavin Tighe here with my good buddy, Stephan Thiele. Stephen, how are you on this freezing and frigid groundhog

Stephen Thiele (00:28):

Day? Well, I understand it's supposed to be a quote early spring, but it's really a riddle, isn't it?

Gavin Tighe (00:35):

Early where? If it's early, I don't know.

Stephen Thiele (00:44):

Was it Wiretin Willie or Punkstatani Phil saw his shadow and it's supposed to be quote in early spring. Okay. Yeah. I'm

Gavin Tighe (00:52):

Not sure which one of the overgrown rodents was in particular. I think there were mixed reviews. It's a pretty useful way to cover your bases in terms of being wrong. It's like one

Stephen Thiele (01:08):

Rodent says early, one rodent says late.

Gavin Tighe (01:09):

Well, there you go.

Stephen Thiele (01:10):

Yeah, you can never be wrong because we know that spring comes in six weeks. So it's either six weeks of winter or it'll be six weeks until spring.

Gavin Tighe (01:20):

That's incredible. So

Stephen Thiele (01:21):

There you go.

Gavin Tighe (01:22):

Heads or tails, same coin. There you are. Anyway, I'm good. How are you doing? I'm pretty good. I fortunately got down south for a little bit, which was really nice. Great to get a breakup of this horrible winter. In the meantime, I had surgery on my hand, which was like, I don't know what the heck I did. Growing old, man, that's a secret. But yeah, so we are going to talk about something that was never around when we were kids.

Stephen Thiele (01:55):

You were going to show our age.

Gavin Tighe (01:57):

We are going to show our age. And actually, it's a pretty remarkable thing. I talk about it with my kids all the time. We're both about the same age. Our kids are kind of the same generation. They kind of grow just before ... I mean, social media was obviously a huge part of their upbringing. They're now in their 20s, but not really quite ... They kind of didn't get as immersed in it, I think, as kids that are growing up now that are teenagers today who really have known nothing else in their lives other than social media. And combine that with what I call the pressure cooker of the COVID pandemic, where you were locked into a confined space, you might as well have been living on the moon and your only social interaction was social media because you were trapped other than your bubble, whatever that was.

(02:59):

So we've got a generation that has grown up in social media. And I really think it's hugely problematic because one of the things ... The way I look at the world is evolution of the human species goes at a certain pace. Technology goes at a million miles an hour faster than evolution. And I don't know that people, despite what they may think of themselves, and our brains have evolved as fast as our technology.

Stephen Thiele (03:33):

I can tell you, Gavin, so when my son was in high school, he actually did a project on connectivity to social media. And one of his good friends basically had issues because what he said was it was hard to disconnect from social media. And I can see it in my own thing. I'm on WhatsApp for hockey. I'm on texting with other people and people text you, they phone you, they email you. Sorry,

Gavin Tighe (04:10):

Laughing because my dog is on social media right now barking away.

Stephen Thiele (04:15):

Well, he wants to get on social media.

Gavin Tighe (04:16):

Listen, he wants to be a star and they're listening. Should be. But anyways, go

Stephen Thiele (04:20):

On. Sorry. So my son was doing this project and looking at already, and this is maybe about seven years ago, I guess now, at the mental health issues that social media is causing, because as you say, we're working now at 1,000 kilometers an hour and everybody is bombarding you. Everybody wants a response from you immediately. And so as you say, we're seeing this play out, particularly now within school boards who are having to hire more counselors and more professionals to deal with mental health issues instead of putting those tax dollars into classroom, into the classroom and actually teaching. That's certainly their argument that they're making. And we have now a number of lawsuits on that very issue.

Gavin Tighe (05:20):

Look, I think it just comes back down to sort of basic realities. I mean, I know that, for example, I'm really going to show my age, but when I was a teenager, you saw your friends at school, you saw your friends on the street, those were basically my friends. I didn't have Facebook friends. It wasn't any Facebook. My friends were the people I knew. And if I wanted to talk to my friends sort of after hours when everybody went home, we talk on the phone. And I don't know about you, but we had one phone in the house and nobody had cell phones. You had a landline. And if you were on it too ... First of all, it was usually in the kitchen where your mother was listening to everything you said. And second of all, if you're on it too long, I yelled at.

(06:11):

So you didn't talk, you kind of disconnected from your social life overnight. You went, you came home, one thing was is that our generation, everybody watched the same TV show because there were only three stations, but you watched a TV show and you went to bed and you got up next day and went or whatever. But now kids, it's like a twenty four seven. They're in a pinball machine. I think of it like you're basically living in a pinball machine 24 hours a day, ding, ding, ding. Everybody's trying to show this perfect Instagram life where everyone's wonderful and they've got everything. And people look at things and it's just the pressure of growing up in that kind of a 24 hour a day environment of being inundated with messages and or trying to follow people or having people follow you and being able to count your friends by the number of followers you have on social media, the pressure that that must be on a 12-year-old adolescent, it's just to me, I look at it like remarkable.

(07:31):

It's just like how, oh my God, what a horrible way

Stephen Thiele (07:35):

To live. No, for sure. And Gavin, it's just not, as you say, pinballing between friends and other acquaintances at all hours of the day. People are using social media to spread gossip. And so that's another pressure that a lot of people feel in terms of there's online shaming that's going on and all other kinds of things that are causing these young kids of today, more and more pressure, pressure to be popular, as you say, the number of followers that you have, et cetera, that's leading to a bit of a crisis. That's what I would call it in mental health of people certainly under the age of 16 years old or maybe even beyond that.

Gavin Tighe (08:40):

Right. So I mean, there's been a number of legal steps to deal with this. I think that what we've seen is plenty of consequences from the mental health side. I mean, I think anecdotally we know that, but there's been some pretty high profile cases of kids who have killed themselves and or been bullied to the point of suicide. I mean, I think that the ability to be just basically mentally exhausted from the stimulus of 24 hour, seven day social media kind of bling, for lack of a better word. It feels like work. Young minds need some time to tune off and just deal with some other things. And I think we see a huge spike in things like ADHD and all of those kinds of things. And I actually think that that's probably related to social media and sort of our new and improved world with constant interaction.

(09:52):

So we've seen two types of responses. I think we've seen responses of governments trying to legislate matters and we've seen litigation in the court. So maybe just give our listeners some idea or an overview of what the government response has been in various jurisdictions around the world.

Stephen Thiele (10:12):

Sure. And on that note, most of the governments around the world have not responded. We've got a handful of governments basically looking to impose bans and restrictions that essentially place the onus on social media providers to restrict access to people either under the age of 16 or under the age of 14. So the lead country with respect to legislation right now is Australia. They've imposed a ban for social media access to children under the age of 16. France is looking at legislation right now. Britain is now beginning to study this. India is also considering this. And in Canada, Prime Minister Carney, we're in February of 2026, in January of 2026, made an announcement that they were looking at banning access to social media for people under the age of 14. There was an online harms bill that was proposed in the last parliament, but because of the election, that bill did not go forward.

(11:40):

Our term is called prorobed, so the bill was never passed. And I don't think it may have passed first reading, but that bill looks like it's coming back and they're going to make it more robust to impose this social media ban for kids under the age of 14. I'm not sure that that goes quite far enough, quite frankly.

Gavin Tighe (12:03):

Or if it's going to work.

Stephen Thiele (12:04):

That's the proposal.

Gavin Tighe (12:05):

Or if it's going to work.

Stephen Thiele (12:07):

And that's the criticism of those kinds of bills.

Gavin Tighe (12:13):

I don't know that you could put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak, in terms of social media at this point in time for kids that have basically grown up with a cell phone in their hands since they were three. I mean, the first kids I see now, little toddlers with iPads and playing ... And that's great. I mean, kids watch movies on them, they play games on them. Look, the reality is I have kids, you have kids. Anything that keeps them quiet is generally a pretty good thing. And if they had had an iPad when my kids ... They would've had an iPad for sure because I would've been guaranteed silence. But I think the reality of it is, is that it is a bit of a parenting crutch, to be blunt, because it's time you don't need to really spend with your kid.

(13:02):

Your kid is being amused and entertained by this machine, but I don't know how you unhook a three-year-old who has basically had the internet since the time that they've been able to speak and is probably more comfortable in front of a screen now than they are potentially in front of other kids.

Stephen Thiele (13:28):

Yeah. I don't know. It's an interesting, I guess, theories in terms of parenting, parenting in terms of allowing your children to have an iPad and just sitting there playing games. Parenting is not easy. Nobody gives you a manual when you have your children.

Gavin Tighe (13:49):

No. And everybody, I mean, you could sit here like, "Whoa, everybody does it. " When you have children and they're young and they're demanding attention and you want them to be amused. And when they're amused, they're quiet. And whether that was when my kids would stick them in front of a movie or whatever, you do it. And I don't know how this is going to work. I think that the other thing too is that you've got a whole generation that's incredibly adept technologically- Yeah, to get around a band. They could get around that. Of course. There's no problem. I mean, if you think you could ban all sorts of things for underage drinking at underage cigarettes, whatever, but where there's a will, there's a way, and I would think that in respect of technology, it's going to be very, very difficult to enforce

Stephen Thiele (14:45):

These types of issues, which I guess Gavin brings up the lawsuits that are currently have been brought against companies like Meta, TikTok, Snapchat. I'm sure there's a whole list of them in terms of these social media platforms that have primarily been brought by school boards. In the United States, it's more robust. You do have private litigants who are seeking damages against these social media platforms. In Ontario, we have a case that has been brought by the Toronto District School Board against Meta and others seeking damages. And the real interesting thing, and Gavin, this basically comes out of a bit of an assignment that my son is doing at first year of law school on the tort of public nuisance and how the school boards are basically trying to advance the law of this particular tort. They've also sued negligence and products liability, but the public nuisance tort is an easier test to meet to get damages.

(16:08):

And the TDSB claim I was looking at is for $750

Gavin Tighe (16:16):

Million.That's

Stephen Thiele (16:17):

An astronomical amount of money.

Gavin Tighe (16:19):

Is it? Maybe, but I think that there's so many ... It sounds like a great idea, but when you actually start to think about the issues that would be arising in this litigation, and this tort of public nuisance, as I understand it, our Supreme Court has sort of defined it as any activity that substantially and unreasonably interferes with the public's interest in questions of health, safety, morality, comfort, or convenience. And I mean, how do you prove that in the context of social media in 2026 when it's so pervasive throughout society? I mean, it's a remarkable undertaking to try to suggest that social media platforms are somehow responsible for the societal shift, and it is a societal shift to a digital reality, a digital social media, a reality that has basically pervaded all aspects of human existence.

Stephen Thiele (17:31):

Yeah. And what I find in terms of the tort of public nuisance in any event, notwithstanding that definition, which appears to be in some respects wide, is actually restricted- It's super wide. Well, but it's restricted in the Canadian context, as well as in certain US states that it actually has to be linked to a real property right. And education is not a real property right. So when you look at the body certainly of Canadian case law where you have in British Columbia a case that was dealing with the opioid crisis, that did not qualify as a public nuisance claim because it was not tethered in any way to a piece of land or a property. And so-

Gavin Tighe (18:35):

It really comes back to basic old nuisance concepts. I mean, if we talk about a Rylands and Fletcher type nuisance claim, it's like one property, it's leaking of contaminants, for example, would be a nuisance claim.

Stephen Thiele (18:51):

Right. That would be a nuisance claim. And a public nuisance claim would be things like blocking access to the waterway or polluting water that impacts that particular public resource. So what they're trying to do, Gavin, is extend the tort and- Which

Gavin Tighe (19:15):

Is fine. The law and the law of particularly the law of tort expands all the time. I mean, that's what the nature of it. I mean, it's easier to use the old law, but it is possible to make new law.

Stephen Thiele (19:26):

Well, it is. And the criticism here is that it would be such a radical shift because a product's liability claim, for example, or a negligence claim has built in protections to a defendant. You need to show proximity, foreseeability, causation, and the public nuisance tort gets around that.

Gavin Tighe (19:50):

Yeah, I think that's where it's sort of thinking about it in basic tort concepts. I mean, there has to be a wrong that causes a loss in a very fundamental way. And those three things sound easy, but proving the connection, first of all, you have to prove that there's a wrong. In other words, I mean, it wouldn't operate under basic ... I mean, how do you even deal with that? I mean, the notion to my mind is social media platforms by design seek to attract people to use them. I mean, it would be like a television station seeking to attract people to watch the television station so that therefore their ratings go up and they can charge more for advertising and make more money. That's the basic concept of broadcasting generally. And why are social media platforms any different than that? Aren't they trying to bring people in to get people to be on their clicking away in order to generate revenue?

(21:00):

Isn't that the whole point of the business?

Stephen Thiele (21:02):

Well, it is. Just as any other business, when you market your business, you're trying to attract people to use your product.

Gavin Tighe (21:10):

Right.

Stephen Thiele (21:11):

So you're saying that ...

Gavin Tighe (21:12):

So is it thought now that they're doing that too well? I mean, that they've actually created a media platform that people just can't get enough of, and that therefore that is a problem. I mean, if it were a TV station, then everybody had to watch it all the time, unless they were hypnotizing people or something. I mean, that would be great. You'd be the greatest program director in history of television, wouldn't you?

Stephen Thiele (21:36):

Sure. But the theory with respect to social media is that the product of social media is deliberately designed or inherently designed to be addictive. And so- Yes, it is. Well, right. So- And if I'm the

Gavin Tighe (21:50):

Marketing director or I'm a shareholder of some, I'm thinking, absolutely, get me more addicts, more clicks, more revenue. Isn't that what I'm trying to do?

Stephen Thiele (21:59):

Right. But when you have a product that creates addicts, you then have responses from government to protect the public from becoming addicts, and how do you do that?

Gavin Tighe (22:11):

Yeah. See, this is where when we started to talk about this subject, and I think that there ... I mean, first of all, there's a couple of things. I think first of all, our knowledge and the science of mental health in terms of causation with respect to social media or not, I mean, anecdotally we may all say, yeah, sure, there's way higher levels of stress among young people, for example, today than there was 40 years ago, but there could be all sorts of other reasons for that. So causation is very, very difficult because we don't really understand. I think frankly, people flatter themselves that they do think they do a lot of mental health issues. So connecting it directly to social media and seeing that it's causative of the damage. Intuitively, I think we know that, but scientifically, I don't know how it would be proven.

Stephen Thiele (23:06):

And I think that's the problem with, if you look at your traditional torts, negligence, products, liability that have those built-in requirements, you're absolutely correct. There are a lot of factors or other factors that may be the cause of a mental health issue in any particular individual, so you're trying to get around it, right?

Gavin Tighe (23:38):

Right, right. So I mean, think about it in another context that I was thinking about as we prepared for this segment. I mean, one of the big mass tort pieces, there's been lots of them. Asbestos has been one. Big tobacco was another one. There would be massive lawsuits by government against big tobacco because the reality was if there was clear evidence to show that smoking caused, for example, lung cancer amongst numerous other ailments, which therefore led to increased hospitalization and healthcare costs for government. So that was a direct correlation between a hazardous product and a public health risk that could be scientifically proven. I mean, there was clear evidence that cigarette smoke caused cancer. I mean, there's no question about that. I struggle that there's a scientific evidence of the same caliber and directness to show that social media use causes, excuse me, all sorts of mental health issues in children.

(24:51):

We know it intuitively, but how do you prove

Stephen Thiele (24:53):

It? Well, look, I think that'll be a very interesting issue, particularly the US case is now going forward. They started jury selection in January. My understanding is that this trial is expected to last six to eight weeks. TikTok and- Wow. I don't know.

Gavin Tighe (25:18):

I mean, it's an enormous subject. I mean, the causation, I mean, the damages issue alone, it's so difficult. I mean, and the reaction is, I suppose it's how an individual reacts to that pressure and how deeply they get involved in it. I mean, there's all sorts of elements to it too. To me, there's the Instagram addicts who are constantly watching everybody around them and watching ... And then there's the kids who get sucked into the online gaming world where they kind of take on the personas of their online personalities and the real world and their online world kind of merge, or in fact, the online world becomes more real to them at some points. I mean,

Stephen Thiele (26:10):

There's all sorts of issues. Right. And that's that case in the US where the 14-year-old boy taking on a persona game of thrones, and then basically the AI chatbox trying to get into a relationship with him and then convinced him, or the allegation is, convinced him to try suicide and the 14-year-old boy committed suicide. Yeah. And the AI thing is all there. That's very

Gavin Tighe (26:37):

Tragic. And the AI angle, as that becomes the norm, frankly, I personally think that AI, the revolution that is about to occur or is occurring now is probably going to make the advent of the internet look like nothing because AI is a whole other issue. I mean, in terms of target marketing, in terms of the feeds that are sent to you, in terms of all of that, AI is dealing with all of those things. I mean, we all have noticed, I mean, many people have noticed you'd be talking about something and then all of a sudden you'll look at Twitter and lo and behold, there's an ad for exactly what you were talking about. I mean, there's all sorts of issues with respect to all of this and sort of how invasive social media and the combination of social media now and AI

Stephen Thiele (27:29):

Have become in our daily lives. Well, and there's all kinds of click bait, right? You're absolutely right. If you watch YouTube and follow something, that's all you're getting on YouTube. You're getting that particular viewpoint. Let's say you're following politics.

Gavin Tighe (27:44):

Well, I think that- It leads us in a whole other direction because I mean, that is, I think, the reason why, despite the fact that there are more sources of information now than there have ever been in history of humanity, you see a world where people are so much more divided because they are falling into silos of information into their own echo chambers all the time and never listening to what the other side has to say.

Stephen Thiele (28:09):

Well, it's echo chambers with information that is not necessarily true. It

Gavin Tighe (28:16):

Needs it to be true.

Stephen Thiele (28:17):

Why let the facts

Gavin Tighe (28:18):

Go and get in the way of a good story come

Stephen Thiele (28:20):

Up? Well, yes, of course. And we're in a world of chaos because of that, right?

Gavin Tighe (28:24):

Exactly. I mean, respect, I do think that legislative approaches to this issue may be too little too late. And I think that ultimately, I don't know that you can stop the freight train of technology with legislative mandates. There are all sorts of workarounds. And the other problem that we've spoken about on many occasions on this podcast is who polices the internet? It's not a domestic issue in one way it is, but there are plenty of ways, as I understand it, to get around domestic borders online.

Stephen Thiele (29:13):

Well, look, of course you can. I suppose we're seeing it right now in Iran. There was no internet access. So certain governments certainly can control access to- Well,

Gavin Tighe (29:28):

They just shut it all

Stephen Thiele (29:28):

Down. Right. They shut it down. One hopes that a government in a Western democracy doesn't go that far, but look, you never know in terms of where the world goes these days in terms of governments reacting and trying to cut off certain social media platforms, whether they can do it or not. I don't know. I'm not a technology wizard, Gavin. We could shove my

Gavin Tighe (30:00):

Right

Stephen Thiele (30:00):

Off. Got a clue. Anyways,

Gavin Tighe (30:03):

I might crawl over there. Your average eight year old today could probably hack around it in 30 seconds. Pardon me for being the cynical old guy, but I think that again, too little too late. I don't know how you give a generation raised on the internet a taste of it, or not even a taste of it. They're immersed in

Stephen Thiele (30:29):

It. They're exposed to it all over

Gavin Tighe (30:31):

The place. And then turn around and shut off the top. Anyways, great topic. One that is certainly unfortunately not going to be resolved in this issue, but I think it underlines once, yet again, one of the problems we see, I think, in our time is that the regulation is lagging so far behind in its pace of the incredible and exponentially growing pace of technology that the ability of traditional regulatory mechanisms to govern non-traditional media, I think that it is whistling past the graveyard.

Stephen Thiele (31:16):

It'll be interesting to see what happens in the cases, Gavin. I don't disagree with you. Look, we're in this massive technological revolution that basically-

Gavin Tighe (31:30):

It's only picking up speed.

Stephen Thiele (31:32):

Yeah, it's right. And it's only picking up speed. And these companies, they don't need factories to do what they're doing. They can be anywhere in the world. And how do you police that?

Gavin Tighe (31:46):

With national regulations. Exactly. How do you police a cyber world with real world policies? Fascinating and almost a zen-like legal question because I don't think there is an answer. I certainly don't think we're going to figure it out in this podcast. So it always raises the question that if no one is above the law, then everyone is beneath it, except if you run a social media platform. Anyway, Stephen, great topic as always. Thanks very much. Please send us your comments. Anything you'd like us to chew on in future episodes. Always thrilled to hear from many of our listeners. Always fun debating and talking about these terrific issues of how the law applies to our real life situation. And we'll be following all of these legislative efforts by various governments, certainly with interest, and the litigation both here in Canada and the United States in terms of social media and where that goes and whether that actually does bring about any meaningful change in the way social media is delivered and sort of the Wild West right now, frankly, for the youngest and most vulnerable members of society.

(33:11):

So Stephen, thanks again. And always remember, if no one is above the law, then everyone is beneath it.