Youth activists protest Meta over mental health impacts

Social media fuelling depression

Speaking with Computer Weekly about how she has been personally affected by social media use from a young age, one of the MYO campaigners, Gigi El-Halaby, said it fuelled her descent into anorexia and depression, and ultimately led to a suicide attempt.

“I used to spend hours on social media already as a vulnerable teenager, and it was hours of social comparison and really unrealistic beauty standards, and also a lot of harassment, cyber bullying and really harmful content that really fuelled my distress,” she said, adding that in practice, social media is isolating people from one another and undermining their chances of forming the genuine “community and connection” that is needed to improve many young people’s mental health.

“I know I’m not alone in this. I know that millions of young people feel the same way, and there’s no accountability at all from the social media firms that are actually driving this crisis.”

To help alleviate the pressures placed on young people by Meta and other social media companies, the activists are calling on the UK government to force these companies to pay financial compensation that can be used to fund timely and appropriate mental health care for young people across Britain; where hundreds of thousands of children are stuck on long waiting lists to access vital services.

“I want social media platforms to stop pretending like they care about our mental health, and actually start trying to put their money where their mouth is, because the profit margins they hold are so monumental,” said El-Halaby, who described the levy being proposed as a “social media tax” that can help young people get the support they need before they reach a crisis point.

However, their calls for financial compensation are not limited to tech firms, and also extend to a range of companies in other sectors they say are negatively shaping the conditions under which young people have to live, including property developers, fossil fuel giants and private healthcare providers.

The MYO campaign’s “week of action” (which coincides with Children’s Mental Health Week) will also see the activists target Priory Roehampton, a privately run mental health hospital, over the poor care NHS inpatients receive in comparison with privately paying patients; the Home Builders Federation, a trade association representing private sector homebuilders in England and Wales; and an undisclosed big oil corporation.

Breaking monopoly power

According to a manifesto published by the group, current conversations around mental health “prioritise personal responsibility and self-management over collective action and system change”, despite the fact that mental illness is largely a “response to the brutal, traumatising and destructive conditions created under capitalism”.

Highlighting the collective social experiences of MYO participants and other young people, the manifesto adds that they have grown up under the “suffocating weight” of austerity; are trapped in a cycle of zero-hour contracts; have never had stable access to housing; and are ultimately the generation that will have to live with the consequences of climate change.

Regarding big tech specifically, it added that these firms “profit from our suffering, fears and insecurities” by using algorithms that “push us deeper into patterns of consumption and mental dependency”, creating an “immense” mental toll.

“AI and algorithms are more than just tools to improve tech giants’ services; they’re a system of psychological manipulation … designed to amplify our desires, keep us hooked, and, most importantly, keep us consuming,” wrote MYO, noting that this model means young people are shown the most “sensational and extreme” content to keep them online and generating revenue for social media firms. “That’s why, to tackle the dangerous impacts of big tech companies, we must focus on breaking the monopoly power they wield.”

The MYO campaign has already attracted support from Labour MP Nadia Whittome, who said it’s no wonder that one in five young people have a probable mental disorder when their “lives are getting harder and harder” across the board.

“The culprits of the youth mental health crisis are clear: years of austerity, combined with unaccountable corporations exploiting young people for profit, facilitated by government policymaking that focuses on the demands of businesses but fails to meet the needs of young people,” she said.

“From property developers to Big Oil companies, these corporations should be paying financial compensation for the harm they are doing. I will be working with my parliamentary colleagues to do this – and take meaningful action to end the crisis our young people are facing.”

Speaking with Computer Weekly about the action outside Meta, Emma Hughes, head of organising and campaigns at Just Treatment, also highlighted that the harms being proliferated online by the largely unchecked business models of social media firms is a monopoly issue of unaccountable power.

On top of making them pay compensation for the harms caused, she said it would “like to see some government regulation to break up these big tech monopolies, and force them to publish their algorithms so we can have a better understanding [of how they work].”

Pointing to the tech oligarchy that has rallied around US president Donald Trump in the wake of his election, Hughes added that “it’s an issue of power – they have so much influence that unless you’re actually tackling the business model and the structures that give them very opaque, unaccountable power, it’s going to be very difficult to regulate them into better behaviour”.

She said that while the UK government’s Online Safety Act is helpful in some ways, it fundamentally does not go far enough in tackling the root of the problem, which is the business models of social media and tech firms.

Hughes concluded that while the web of corporate interests and economic policies making life difficult for young people are certainly powerful, “strategic, determined” interventions led by those most affected such as the MYO campaign can be effective in producing change.

“It’s not going to be an easy overnight win, but you can achieve changes with actually quite small resources,” she said, highlighting a previous campaign that Just Treatment ran in collaboration with families and other grassroots organisations that forced pharmaceutical firm Vertex to lower its cystic fibrosis drug prices after initially trying to increase its charges to the NHS.

“We forced that corporation to drop their prices by shaming them and forcing governments to look into it, so there are tools available to challenge corporate power,” said Hughes.