Early last month in a New Mexico court, a judge ordered Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, to pay a $567 million fine for the addiction and mental health problems its platforms have caused teenagers. Of that amount, about $420 million will go toward “treatment services” for children who have been harmed due to the use of Facebook and Instagram; in other words, therapy. (Meta is appealing the ruling.) Three weeks later, Meta reached a massive settlement with 47 states and the District of Columbia in which it agreed to pay up to $18 billion to resolve similar charges. The attorneys general who brought the case present it as a historic relief for a generation in crisis. While the deal requires Meta to create safeguards for teens and gives parents more control over how their children use the company’s social media platforms, it will also put large amounts of money toward counseling, i.e. therapy. But is therapy really the best use of some of the settlement money? As co-founder and senior member, respectively, of the Center for Teen Flourishing (CTF), our answer is resounding: no.
