Social media should be treated like alcohol. But money got in the way.

If social media can be bad for adults — it is, all too often, a force for bringing out the worst in its consumers — it can be really bad for minors. Both the Surgeon General and the American Psychological Association have issued advisories warning that heavy social media use by minors can cause serious mental health problems ranging from anxiety over cyberbullying to body image problems to eating disorders. As with gambling, the distinction between mental and physical effects is a false dichotomy; for teenagers in particular, excessive social media use can in effect rewire the brain.

So there’s a very good case for a social media equivalent to the minimum drinking age. In fact, that’s what Australia has just done, banning access to social media for children under 16.

But then Mark Zuckerberg and Meta got to work. After all, while most of us see social media addiction as a health crisis, for Meta it’s a business model.