The Dark Science Addicting Kids to Social Media—and How to Protect Them

At the recent landmark Los Angeles social media addiction trial, the court ruled that addictive “features” in Instagram—like infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendations—addicted a young woman during her childhood and contributed to her serious mental health problems. While individual design features do pose risks to kids, there is a much darker truth essentially unknown to parents and even health experts: Social media corporations are using an entire secret science to addict kids.

Richard Freed’s books:

Better Than Real Life: The Secret Science Addicting Kids to Screens—and How to Save Childhood

Wired Child: Reclaiming Childhood in a Digital Age

Richard Freed’s website

Website: RichardFreed.com

Transcript

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At a recent landmark Los Angeles social media addiction trial, the court ruled that addictive features in Instagram, like Infinite Scroll and algorithmic recommendations addicted a young woman during her childhood and contributed to her serious mental health problems. While individual design features do pose risks to kids, there is a much darker truth, essentially unknown to parents and even health experts, that we need to talk about here. Social media corporations are using an entire secret science to addict kids, a science in which hundreds of features are designed to interact with one another simultaneously to form a perfectly and powerfully addictive product. This science is called persuasive design. And it is the creation of digital devices and apps to use psychology to control humans. I have devoted my career as a child and adolescent psychologist to exposing Silicon Valley's use of its addictive science of persuasive design and how it is devastating kids' health and success. In 2018, I wrote the first major media article on the hurtful impact of big tech's use of persuasive design on children and teens, entitled The Tech Industry's War on Kids. Since that time, my work to expose this hidden science has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other media outlets. And in 2025, I authored my book, Better Than Real Life, revealing how Silicon Valley's use of persuasive design is robbing kids of the real-world lives essential to their health. In this podcast, I pull back the curtain on the social media industry's addictive science. We'll see the story of its creation and the disturbing reason it is able to control our behavior. And while adults may learn in this podcast why it's so hard for you to look up from social media, my focus here is primarily on how this science exploits our kids, as their developing brains are much more vulnerable than ours. Persuasive design now used by the social media industry to hook users was fathered primarily by psychologist and professor Dr. B.J. Fogg at Stanford University in the 1990s. Fogg may be the person who has had the most impact on childhood, family, and our entire world that you've never heard of. That's because the social media industry does everything it can to keep its use of the science of persuasive design a secret. But a tiny handful of leading brain scientists know that Fogg is the person most responsible for developing the science social media corporations used to addict their users. In fact, Fogg has been called the millionaire maker because a number of his students joined industry and did very well for themselves. Because the social media industry's use of persuasive design has caused so much suffering for this generation of children, I believe this has contributed to Fogg falsely denying that he created persuasive design. In response to my article, The Tech Industry's War on Kids, Fogg responded, would you blame the scientists who studied and warned about global warming to be the cause of it? Of course not. That's been my role. I studied persuasive tech and I warned about it. If you find evidence otherwise, please let me know. This prompts the question: what is it about a science that would lead a key founder to disavow his role in its development and instead claim his job has been to study and warn about it? But Fogg himself makes clear he is the key father of persuasive design, the one now used by the social media industry to exploit kids. Fogg explained on his personal website. Over 25 years ago, I was reading Aristotle's Rhetoric when I realized that someday computers would be designed to influence humans. I decided to explore this area scientifically. As a doctoral student at Stanford in the 1990s, I ran the first ever series of experiments to discover how computers could change people's attitudes and behaviors. I named this new area Persuasive Technology. This is now better known as Persuasive Design. So as Fogg says himself, he's the guy. In 1998, Fogg founded the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab. It was here that Fogg worked out just how digital devices could use psychology to manipulate us, to manipulate human behavior. His lab's uh uh website's tagline is perhaps the best explanation of persuasive design's purpose. Machines designed to change humans. Let the meaning of that sink in. Social media corporations are using a powerful hidden science to control children, to alter their behavior for their own means, even if that means addicting them. Considering persuasive design's purpose is to use digital devices to control human behavior, it's not surprising that when Fogg unveiled his new science at a 1997 Atlanta Tech Conference, the audience had a strong reaction. According to economist writer Ian Leslie, this reaction fell into two groups. Either this is dangerous, it's like giving uh people the tools to construct an atomic bomb, or this is amazing, it could be worth billions of dollars. Both were right. Persuasive design has gone on to be a colossal profit engine for the consumer tech industry. At the same time, the science has created technologies that pose the risk of addiction and harm, especially to this generation of children and teens. Before I go further, it's it's important to say that persuasive design can be used ethically to make websites and other technologies work better for users. But what I talk about here is something completely different. This is the use of a powerful science that purposely targets our brains' vulnerabilities to control our behavior. And because kids' minds are developing, this science is being used unethically and immorally, and I believe illegally, to exploit kids. In fact, Fogg himself tells us that kids need to be protected from persuasive design. As he says, persuasive technology products can be designed to target vulnerable populations, people who are inordinately susceptible to influence. When they exploit vulnerable groups, the products are unethical. The most obvious vulnerable group is children. But that's exactly what the social media industry is doing right now. Yet Fogg's messaging about the use of persuasive design to control kids is mixed, as he has also bragged on his personal website that his science is used in social media popular with kids, uh, telling us my students often do groundbreaking projects and they continue having impact in the real world after they leave Stanford. For example, Instagram has influenced the behavior of over 800 million people. The co-founder was a student of mine. As we have seen, an LA court just ruled that Instagram is addictive and hurts kids. And a profound example of right place, right time, just as Fogg and his colleagues were working out ways for digital machines to change human behavior at Stanford in the early 2000s, right next door in Silicon Valley, social media corporations were looking for ways to control the behavior of their users. Facebook was created in 2004, and in 2012, Facebook purchased uh Child Popular Instagram. And in spite of Instagram's claims that it is a place for kids to connect, internal documents released during court proceedings reveal a much more dangerous truth. According to the Tech Oversight Project, which is a great group, Meta's internal documents show that Instagram's primary goal is to maximize overall use time, contradicting Zuckerberg's statements to Congress. To use the science of persuasive design to pull kids onto Instagram and keep them there is to rob kids of essential real-world experiences and hurt them. What makes social media addictive and dangerous to kids and completely different than traditional media such as TV and movies, is that it is scientifically and experimentally developed by brain scientists to be addictive using the science of persuasive design. Fogg describes this process with uh with his science in his article, Creating Persuasive Technologies, an eight-step design process. He outlines how a research team does pilot testing using independent and dependent variables. Following these steps is the starting point for a controlled experiment from a scientific standpoint, unquote. And the bottom line, this experimental science, as used by social media corporations, is capable of addicting kids and predictably causing them serious physical and mental health problems. So, how does Fog Science of Persuasive Design, as used by social media companies, gain the ability to control our behavior? The answer is really disturbing. By hacking our brains, which evolved for four million years to succeed in a stone age environment, but that are really a poor fit for the modern world. Fogg explains how social media companies are able to use his fog behavior model, which is really a formula for behavior change. Fogg's behavior change formula has a deceivingly simple formula. B equals MAT. B represents the target behavior that a company desires from users, which typically for social media companies is to increase kids' time on device. To achieve the target behavior, three factors are put into place simultaneously. Motivation, M, ability, A, and triggers T. Let's take a look at each of them. You will see how at each step our kids' ancient DNA is targeted and exploited in order to control their behavior. M stands for motivation, and it's the first factor in Fogg's model. Fogg describes how social media companies can use a key element of motivation, the human instinct for social connection, to manipulate their users' behavior. As he does so, Fogg makes it clear that this really takes advantage of vulnerabilities in our ancient brains. He says, the power of social motivation is likely hardwired into us and perhaps all other creatures that historically depended on living in groups to survive. The power over us is undeniable. Social media companies supercharge Fogg's motivation factor by quantifying peer connections in the form of likes, friends, followers, and other markers of social bonds. Social media corporations then gamify this social environment by putting these markers on conspicuous display, encouraging social comparison and turning it into a contest of kids' social value. These artificial measures of social worth are then delivered to kids like a slot machine as they swipe through their platforms. Remarkably, Fogg says an even more powerful motivator than social connection is the instinct to avoid being socially rejected. As he explains, being banished from a community was a severe punishment for humans. For other creatures, being ostracized from a pack may have meant certain death. Social media companies exploit this painful instinct by fostering the fear of missing out or FOMO. Companies achieve this by sending kids lots of posts of high-status peers and celebrities who have great numbers of likes and follower counts or who look like they are having a great time without them. Kids feel that they aren't good enough, that they are left out. While painful, our kids can't look away. As Fogg tells us, today, with social technologies, and that's social media, a reality, the methods for motivating people through social acceptance or social rejection have blossomed. It makes me sad to see this science used to profit off of our kids' emotional pain. Yet motivation, or M is just one of three factors used in Fogg's behavior change formula employed by social media companies. The second factor is ability, or A. Contrary to the common meaning for ability, this is actually about making technologies require little effort or thought. This is so that users don't have to, as Fogg says, think hard. So he also refers to this factor as simplicity. The persuasive design factor of ability takes advantage of an adaptive trait formed over millions of years in times of scarcity for humans to take the least demanding path. Why risk life and limb trying to hunt down one antelope when you can run a small herd off a cliff and then still have energy for the next uh task? As Fogg explains, in real-world design, increasing ability is not about teaching people to do new things or training them for improvement. People are generally resistant to teaching and training because it requires effort. This clashes with the natural wiring of human adults. We are fundamentally lazy. So how does this translate into building social media products kids can't put down? Fogg writes, if a task seems simple to us, like clicking the mouse once or twice, we are likely to do the task right away. When tasks are complex or have multiple steps, we are more likely to avoid the task or procrastinate. That's why all it takes to like one uh more photo is the impulsive tap of a finger. The result is that Fogg's behavior change formula ensures that kids don't have to do the hard work of real social engagement. They just stare at their phones, often lying in bed, clicking away. So far, based on Fogg's persuasive design formula, social media corporations create products that feed primal forms of motivation and require little ability. Enter the third and final factor in Fogg's behavior change formula, triggers, or T. As Fogg tells us, triggers can cause us to act on impulse. Silicon Valley's use of triggers include interrupting sound and visual notifications, telling users to check social media over and over until users develop their own internal triggers or habit. Throughout millions of years of our evolution, it was absolutely critical for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to focus on interrupting triggers, such as the noise in the bushes that signaled it was time to fight or run away from a predator. Today, social media companies exploit this instinct with incessant, distracting notifications. It's not by chance that many notifications are presented visually in red, which is a color that since the beginning of time has signaled danger. For example, blood. With each factor in Fogg's formula, motivation, ability, and triggers, we see how it targets the vulnerabilities in kids' stone age DNA to pull them away from the real world onto social media sites. Yet Fogg tells us that the real power of his behavior change formula is that the three factors essentially must be applied together. Users are continually triggered to indulge in easy A rewards M. Social media companies exploit Fogg's model to addict kids. To make the model more powerful, they have rooms full of brain and AI scientists try hundreds, if not thousands, of combinations of motivation, ability, and triggers to hook kids. These combinations are then tested in real time as kids are on social media sites, all to make the perfectly addictive product. It's time that we stop believing industry false promises that social media is a place for kids to connect. Instead, its very foundation is built around an addictive science to do anything and everything to increase kids' time on the platform. With the result that many become addicted. Except this one is for kids. Guess who knows that Instagram uh hurts kids? Meta or Instagram employees themselves. According to the tech oversight project, here's what court documents reveal that Meta knows about its addictive uh how its addictive products affect kids. These are the actual words from Meta's internal documents. As you will see, they are the exact opposite of what Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have told you. It seems clear from what's presented here that some of our users are addicted to our products. And I worry that driving sessions, which are uh deliberate efforts to increase use, incentivizes us to make our product more addictive without providing much more value. That was said by a senior uh data scientist at Meta. Here's another one. Teens can't switch off from Instagram even if they want to, which was said in a meta internal study. And the last one I'm gonna mention here of many that are so disturbing are um oh my gosh, y'all, IG, which is stands for Instagram, is a drug. We're basically pushers. And that was said in a meta internal chat message. No company, not even one as big as meta. With a founder and CEO as powerful as Mark Zuckerberg, should ever be allowed to hurt kids like this. What's abundantly clear is that Meta and Instagram should not be trusted, and especially not be trusted with our kids' health. Social media companies are betting that their secret science of addiction is never revealed. That's why I wrote my book, Better Than Real Life: The Secret Science Addicting Kids to Screens and How to Save Childhood. In the book, I expose the science of persuasive design, how it's used to addict kids, and I show how it's really quite easy to understand. That's because you you don't really need to know, just you don't need to know Fogg's model, you don't need to know all that stuff about persuasive design. What you really need to know is that it's being purposefully used to create better than real life digital experiences for kids. Of course, social media is not more helpful to kids than the essential real-world activities that it displaces. But the science of persuasive design is so powerful that it is able to convince youth deep down in their genes that living their lives on social media is better than running and playing, better than engaging with school, better than spending time with family. This is the essence of addiction, and it's the reason why this generation of kids is suffering from epidemic rates of depression, suicidality, self-injury, physical health problems, and academic failure. So, how can we as parents and others who care for kids protect them from the social media industry's dangerous science of addiction? Let's take a look at six actions that make the difference between kids having a great life and being put at risk. Number one, don't believe that fixing a few addictive social media features will make it safe for kids. The entire social media experience is designed around the addictive science of persuasive design, and it's designed to pull kids away from all things real world. This guarantees kids will be hurt. Fixing a few features doesn't protect kids. Essentially, it should be made illegal to use the addictive science of persuasive design on kids. That's what the founder of Fog actually tells us. Until that happens, we must take actions ourselves to protect kids. Number two, we need to recognize that social media poses serious risks to the mental health of our kids, and I would say physical health and academic success for all ages of children and teens. There isn't a safe age. We know that because even young adults who spend more time on social media are more depressed. So the the farther we can push back the age when kids use social media, the better, with the ideal age being 18. Number three, giving kids smartphones puts them at risk, no matter the age. That's because giving kids a smartphone means essentially providing them access to social media. That's because parental controls typically fail. Don't be tricked into believing that you can lock down social media on a smartphone. In my clinical practice, parents are constantly finding parental controls fail. And then kids get hurt. When you decide your kid needs a phone, get them a basic one without internet access. Number four, this is commonsensical. We need to get smartphones out of schools. States across the nation are moving to get phones out of school, as the reality is that kids spend their school days being pulled away by addictive social media rather than doing their work. Number five, we need to reject industry-funded organizations pushing social media on kids. The social media addiction trial exposes a number of child health organizations and experts as doing some very bad things that put our kids in danger. It's unethical and I believe illegal for many leading health organizations making judgments about the safety of kids' social media uh use are themselves shoving their pockets full of social media industry money, and in turn claim social media is harmless or a great place for kids. I detail these organizations in better than real life, and they include the most trusted child health bodies in the US, including Common Sense Media, the American Academy of Pediatrics chief social media guideline maker and Dr. Megan Moreno, and the Digital Wellness Lab led by Michael Rich. All of these health bodies have pocketed money from Mark Zuckerberg and his related entities. Parents should know never to trust child health orgs and experts funded by industry. I believe these organizations which have falsely claimed to be independent as they push kids onto social media or say it's harmless are themselves at risk to be named in class action lawsuits for misleading families and hurting kids. And last, number six, we need to educate our kids that social media is built around an addictive science to control them. We need to help kids understand that using social media puts them at risk to be addicted, sad, and less likely to achieve the goals that they have set for themselves. To sum up what we've talked about here in this podcast, the social media addiction trial is a game changer. It offers us a window into the secret science of persuasive design, addicting kids to social media. A science that every parent and child caregiver needs to be aware of. The trial exposes the social media industry for knowingly hurting kids. It's time we take action to protect our kids from addictive social media products so we can provide them happier, healthier, and more successful lives. Take care, and I will see you soon.