The Week Social Media Finally Had to Answer for Itself

I've been sitting with a lot of feelings about this industry lately. That's not an easy thing to say out loud when your whole business runs on the same platforms making headlines right now.

A California jury just found Meta and Google negligent NPR in a case that stopped me mid-scroll. The jury concluded that Meta and Google's apps were deliberately built to be addictive, and that the companies' executives knew this and failed to protect their youngest users. NPR The plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman, started using YouTube at 6 and Instagram at 11. She testified that using the platforms almost nonstop led to depression, anxiety, and body image issues. "It really affected my self-worth," she said. Ophthalmology Advisor

I believe her.

A major evidence review published in JAMA Pediatrics this month concluded that social media increases children's risk of depression, self-harm, substance use, and behavioral problems, with researchers noting the risk is "comparable with other modifiable lifestyle factors, such as physical inactivity and unhealthy diet." Bhnet We're not talking about a fringe opinion. We're talking about peer-reviewed science catching up to what a lot of us already felt in our gut.

So where does that leave those of us who use these tools for work? Specifically, professionally? As adults?

Here's where I have to think out loud for a second, because this matters to me personally.

The thing these verdicts keep circling back to is design. Lawyers argued that features like infinite scroll, constant notifications, autoplaying videos, and beauty filters made apps like Instagram and YouTube equivalent to a "digital casino." The legal argument wasn't about the content people see, but about the architecture of the platforms themselves. NPR That's a meaningful distinction. The harm wasn't just what kids were watching. It was how the machine was built to keep them watching.

Adults are not immune to that architecture. But adults who use social media with intention, with a clear purpose and a clear off switch, are not the same as a 6-year-old handed a device with no guardrails. That matters.

My clients are artists, musicians, wellness practitioners, tattooists, estheticians. They are fully booked. They are successful. They are adults who already know who they are and what they do. They are not on Instagram trying to figure out their self-worth through likes. They are there because their clients look them up. Period.

The way I work is slow on purpose. My collaborators film their work on their own time. They send me what they've got. I edit it. I post it. Once a day, 10am, done. There is no doom-scrolling baked into that process. There are no engagement traps or follower-chasing tactics. We're not farming dopamine. We're documenting a body of work.

That's a different thing entirely.

Social media, used this way, functions the way a portfolio always has. It answers the question a potential collaborator is already asking before they ever pick up the phone. "Is this person legit? Do they do the kind of work I want? Are they still collaborating?" That's it. That's the whole job.

The platforms' "deliberately addictive design features, including algorithmic content recommendations, beauty filters, and push notifications" Lanier Law Firm are real. They are dangerous in the wrong context, for the wrong user, without any structure around them. But the answer to that isn't to abandon the channel. It's to use it with enough intentionality that the algorithm is a vehicle, not a trap.

When I think about the collaborators I work with and those I'm trying to attract, none of them are on these platforms because they love social media. They're there because being invisible online means losing work to someone with worse skills and a better feed. That's the reality. And I don't think pretending the platforms don't exist is the answer.

What I do think is that the way most people approach social media, endless content, reactive posting, chasing trends, is the version that feeds the machine. My approach doesn't do that. My collaborators are not the ones white-knuckling their phones at midnight checking metrics. They're in their studios, doing their actual work, while their online presence runs quietly in the background.

The lawsuits argue that "for years, social media companies have profited from targeting children while concealing their addictive and dangerous design features." Ophthalmology Advisor That's true. And it needed a reckoning. But the adults in my world, the ones who have built real careers on real skills, deserve a way to show up online that doesn't cost them their peace. That's the whole point of what I do.

I'm not neutral on this. I've watched the news this past week and I've felt the weight of it. I have the granddaughter. I care about what these platforms do to developing minds. I also care about the artist in Hudson Valley who does stunning work and whose only online presence is a three-year-old photo with a busted watermark. She deserves to be found. She deserves representation that actually looks like her work.

Both things are true. Social media, as designed, has caused real harm to real kids. And social media, used with structure and intention, is still a legitimate tool for adult professionals who want to grow without handing their nervous system over to an algorithm.

That's the version I work in. That's the version I'll keep working in.

Hey- thanks for reading this. Not my normal blog material, I know.