Why Experts Say Mark Zuckerberg is Responsible for Mental Health Crisis

Published: April 8, 2024

Why Experts Say Mark Zuckerberg is Responsible for Mental Health Crisis

By Movieguide® Contributor

As more experts assert that the rise in youth depression and anxiety are linked to social media, some are going a step further, alleging that platform owners, like Mark Zuckerberg, bear personal responsibility for the mental health crisis.

“The reason I think Zuckerberg does bear some personal responsibility is there were many internal warnings, many… said, ‘We are causing problems, we are addicting kids,’” NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt told the “Brave New World” podcast.

“They suggested features that would help Facebook, Meta, Instagram, they never did any of them unless they were trivial,” he continued. “They never did anything that reduced their user base, like actually kicking off kids who were under 13.”

Haidt believes that Zuckerberg has turned a blind eye to the effects his platforms have had on younger kids, guiding his company to create products that place profit above user safety. The psychologist cites the company’s lack of protection against suicidal content as just one example of this moral failing.

“Does Mark Zuckerberg deserve some blame for some of these suicide deaths? I think the answer is yes,” Haidt said.

However, according to Haidt, the blame does not stop at the social media companies. He believes the government is also responsible because it’s given social media companies the freedom to regulate their platforms independently. This precedent has caused these companies to create policies that are loosely enforced, shifting the enforcement into the hands of parents and guardians.

“If Congress said, ‘You have to be 21 to drink, but we’re going to give immunity to the alcohol industry – it’s the parents’ job to keep their children out of bars,’ that’s the situation we’re in with social media,” Haidt told PEOPLE. “It’s absurd. Parents can’t possibly do that.”

He believes that the state and federal governments need to better regulate social media to protect children from the mental health harm that it causes. Rather than say in a blanket statement that users need to be older than 13 to join, social media companies need to actively verify the age of their users.

Based on his research, Haidt also believes 13 is still too young to use these platforms, and the minimum age should be at least 16.

Movieguide® previously reported:

NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes the damage social media wreaks on children’s mental health is undeniable; he is now pushing to hold companies accountable for the damage they have done.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” Haidt told PEOPLE. “There’s massive evidence of harm. It happened in many countries at the same time, at a specific point in time: the moment when teens traded their flip phones for smartphones. It’s as if you had a murder, and all eyewitnesses point to this suspect. There is no other explanation.”

According to Haidt, rates of anxiety and depression skyrocketed among youth worldwide around 2012, five years after the iPhone was released and two years after Instagram debuted. He believes the link between these occurrences is not incidental, and lawmakers have allowed social media companies to get away with something inexcusable.