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You open Instagram to reply to a message. You check one TikTok. You watch a video someone sent you.
Then you look at the time and somehow half an hour has disappeared.
It’s an experience many social media users will recognise.
For years, spending too much time on social media was largely treated as a question of personal responsibility. If you were scrolling too much, perhaps you simply needed to put your phone down.
But that assumption is increasingly being challenged.
Researchers, regulators and governments are examining whether some of the features built into social media platforms actively encourage us to keep scrolling, watching and coming back for more.
Social media addiction is a term used to describe social media use that becomes difficult to control and starts interfering with everyday life.
It goes beyond simply spending a lot of time online.
Researchers have identified patterns of compulsive use, including repeatedly checking social media, feeling anxious or distressed when unable to access it and continuing to use platforms even when that use is affecting relationships, responsibilities or wellbeing.
Although social media addiction is not currently recognised as a standalone disorder in major diagnostic systems, that does not mean the problems people experience are not real.
Research increasingly points to a combination of psychological, social and technological factors that can encourage compulsive use. These include the desire for social approval, fear of missing out and platform features such as infinite scrolling, personalised notifications and reward systems designed to keep people engaged.
There is no single test that determines whether someone is addicted to social media. But signs that your use may be becoming difficult to control can include:
Studies have linked excessive or compulsive use with poorer sleep, anxiety and depression, reduced concentration, difficulties with everyday responsibilities and strain on real-life relationships.
The important question is not simply how many hours you spend online. It is whether you still feel in control of your social media use. Or whether the platforms are increasingly controlling how you spend your time and attention.
Social media platforms don’t simply wait for us to decide what we want to see next.
They recommend content, automatically play videos, send notifications and continuously provide something new to look at.
Many of these features are sometimes described as “persuasive design”. In other words, design choices that influence what we do and encourage us to continue engaging with a service.
On their own, these features are not necessarily harmful. Autoplay can be convenient. Recommendations can help us discover things we genuinely enjoy. Notifications can tell us when someone has contacted us.
The concern is what happens when several of these features work together on platforms whose success depends heavily on keeping people engaged.
The European Commission has highlighted four features in particular when examining the design of Facebook and Instagram. The Commission has also raised similar concerns about TikTok.
They are:
These features can remove some of the natural stopping points that would otherwise give us an opportunity to decide whether we actually want to continue. Think about reading a newspaper or watching a television programme. You eventually reach the end. A social media feed doesn’t have to end at all.
Infinite scroll is exactly what it sounds like.
Instead of reaching the bottom of a page and choosing whether to load more content, new posts or videos automatically appear as you continue scrolling.
It sounds like a small design decision, but removing that extra click also removes a moment when you might otherwise stop.
Ofcom has examined how features including infinite scrolling and autoplay can influence people’s behaviour online. Its research suggests that features which automatically move users through content can affect the choices they make.
By removing natural stopping points, infinite scroll makes it easier to keep consuming content without consciously deciding to continue.
Autoplay works in a similar way. Finish one video and another starts.
On short-form video platforms, moving to the next piece of content can take little more than a swipe. And every decision that is removed makes passive consumption easier.
Instead of actively deciding to watch another video, stopping becomes the action that requires a decision.
That distinction has attracted the attention of regulators. Ofcom has found that autoplay can influence people’s viewing behaviour and has warned that features such as autoplay and infinite scrolling may reduce people’s sense of control online.
Perhaps the biggest difference between social media and older forms of entertainment is that everyone sees a different version of the platform.
Recommendation systems use information about how we interact with content to decide what to show us next. The result can be a feed that becomes increasingly tailored to the individual using it.
That can be useful. If you love gardening, football, fashion or history, recommendations can help you find accounts, videos and communities you might otherwise never discover. But personalisation can also make feeds increasingly difficult to leave by continuously learning what captures an individual’s attention and serving them more of it.
The European Commission has raised concerns about highly personalised recommendations.
Not every design feature is intended to keep you on an app once you’re there. Some are very effective at bringing you back.
A message. A like. Someone has commented on your post. A creator you follow has uploaded something. You’ve been tagged in a photograph.
Each notification gives you another reason to pick up your phone.
Once you’ve opened the app, the notification that brought you there may be only the beginning.
Again, notifications have obvious benefits. Most of us want to know when someone has contacted us.
The issue is whether the volume, timing and design of notifications encourage repeated checking that goes beyond what we originally intended.
Social media is built around feedback. Likes, comments, views, shares, follower numbers, streaks and other rewards can all encourage us to keep checking what is happening on a platform.
One reason these features are so powerful is that the reward is not always predictable.
You might open an app and find that a post has received lots of likes or comments. Another time, there may be nothing new. That uncertainty can encourage repeated checking in the hope of receiving the next rewarding interaction.
Researchers have described this as a variable reward system. The anticipation of social approval can activate reward pathways in the brain, involving dopamine, and help reinforce habitual patterns of use.
Over time, that cycle can make it harder to stop checking, particularly when platforms combine social rewards with notifications, personalised recommendations and an endless supply of new content.
This question is now at the heart of major legal and regulatory action against some of the world’s biggest social media companies.
Platforms including Facebook and Instagram use features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, push notifications and highly personalised recommendations to keep people engaged and encourage them to return.
Critics argue that this is not accidental. A growing number of legal claims allege that some social media companies deliberately designed their platforms to encourage compulsive use and keep people online for longer.
Those allegations are now being tested in courts and by regulators.
Although adults can experience problematic social media use, there are additional concerns around children and teenagers.
Young people are still developing their ability to regulate behaviour and assess risk. Social media can also play an important role in friendships, identity and social acceptance during adolescence.
That can make simply “switching off” more complicated than it sounds.
Recent UK government research with teenagers found that many young people themselves linked personalised feeds, endless scrolling and persistent notifications with losing track of time and finding it difficult to disengage.
Some described social media use displacing sleep, homework and other activities.
These concerns have contributed to the UK government’s decision to introduce a ban on major social media platforms for children under 16.
Additional protections are also planned for 16- and 17-year-olds, including overnight restrictions and autoplay and personalised feeds being switched off by default.
You can read more about what is changing in our guide to the UK under-16 social media ban.
What exactly is being proposed? Which platforms could be affected? And what are the arguments for and against the ban?
Much of the debate around social media focuses on children. But adults aren’t immune to problematic social media use.
You might recognise some of these experiences:
Experiencing one of these things does not necessarily mean you are addicted. But repeated difficulty controlling your use — particularly where it affects sleep, work, relationships or wellbeing — can be a sign of problematic or compulsive social media use.
When it comes to how social media is designed, regulators are starting to intervene.
In February 2026, the European Commission preliminarily found TikTok in breach of the Digital Services Act over what it described as the addictive design of the platform. It highlighted features including infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications and its highly personalised recommendation system.
In July 2026, the European Commission preliminarily found Meta in breach of the Digital Services Act over what it described as the addictive design of Facebook and Instagram. Its investigation also highlighted infinite scrolling, autoplay, push notifications and highly personalised recommendation systems.
The Commission said Meta had not adequately assessed the risks these features could pose to users’ physical and mental wellbeing, including vulnerable adults as well as children. It also said Meta’s existing measures were not sufficient to address those risks. Meta disputes the Commission’s findings.
Platform design is increasingly becoming a legal issue too.
Thousands of lawsuits have been brought in the United States alleging that social media companies designed products in ways that encouraged compulsive use among children and contributed to harm.
In one landmark California case, a jury awarded $6 million to a woman who alleged that becoming addicted to social media as a child had harmed her mental health. Meta and Google-owned YouTube are appealing the decision.
In August 2026, Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle US lawsuits brought by states alleging that Facebook and Instagram had been deliberately designed to be addictive for children. As part of the agreement, Meta agreed to introduce significant changes for teenagers, including default daily usage limits, overnight restrictions and stronger age assurance measures. Meta denies wrongdoing.
These cases primarily concern alleged harm to children and young people. They do not establish that everyone who uses social media excessively has been harmed by its design. But they represent a significant shift in the debate.
The question is increasingly not just what users should do to control their screen time, but what responsibility platforms have for the environments they create.
The US cases do not automatically mean people in the UK are entitled to compensation. The laws and legal systems are different.
However, at least one UK law firm is now investigating whether people who were harmed by social media as children could have grounds to seek compensation in the UK.
At Join the Claim, we’ll continue to monitor developments and explain what they could mean for children and families in the UK.
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You don’t have to stop using social media to change your relationship with it. Social media can be entertaining, informative and genuinely valuable. The aim isn’t necessarily to use it as little as possible.
But it can be useful to put some of the decisions back in your hands.
You could:
Ofcom research published in 2026 found that both adults and children frequently kept safer social media settings when those settings were selected for them by default.
If changing a default changes behaviour, that raises an important question about how much influence platforms have over the choices we make in the first place.
Perhaps the most important change in the social media debate is where responsibility is being placed.
Individuals still make choices about how they use technology. Parents also play an important role in helping children develop healthy online habits.
But those choices aren’t made in a vacuum.
The platforms themselves decide whether the next video plays automatically, whether a feed ever ends, what notifications we receive and which content appears in front of us.
As regulators and courts pay closer attention to those choices, the debate is not just whether we’re spending too much time on our phones. It’s how much responsibility social media companies should have for designing platforms that allow us to put them down.
At Join the Claim, we’ll continue tracking developments around social media safety, platform design, online harms and potential legal action.
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