June 4, 2026, 4:06 a.m. CT
- The Levin Papantonio law firm hosted a town hall addressing the the dangers social media platforms pose to children
- Data presented says 95% of teens use social media, with 46% saying they’re online almost constantly
- Mike Papantonio said about 5% of young people are already addicted to social media and the industry is using algorithms to attract not just teens but even younger children
When it comes to social media and children, Pensacola Police Sgt. Jeff Brown encourages parents to be nosy.
Perform unannounced searches of your child’s cellphone, see how much time and battery life they spend on social media apps, and don’t give a child the option of not allowing you to see their device.
That is how Brown said he managed social media with his daughter, now a college student, when she was younger.
“It was never, ‘Hey, can I see your phone? (It was) Give me your phone.’ If I’m paying the bill, it’s my phone,” Brown said, adding he checked the cellphone at random times and in random places like during dinner, early mornings or even at restaurants.
Those were among tips and information Brown and other experts shared during a Community Town Hall on Social Media Harm held June 1 at Sanders Beach Community Center.
Ninety-five percent of teens use social media with 46% saying they’re online “almost constantly – spending an average of 7 hours and 22 minutes of screentime a day,” according to the Levin Papantonio law firm, which hosted the town hall.
Florida’s social media law
Florida law prohibits children under the age of 14 from signing up for social media accounts and requires children ages 14 and 15 to have parental or guardian approval. The law also requires social media platforms to terminate existing accounts suspected to belong to children under 14.
However, Mike Papantonio said about 5% of young people are already addicted to social media and the industry is using algorithms to attract not just teens but even younger children.
“That’s a low, low figure by the way. … Can you imagine that 5% of our young people are literally addicted to social media the same way that they might become addicted to drugs or alcohol or tobacco?” he said to the group of about 40 town hall attendees.
“And the ugly part is you’re going to hear that the industry knew how to do it. The social media industry understood how you addict a 10-year-old—what you call a tween. … Why do you addict a 10-year-old? You addict a 10-year-old so they stay with you until they are 20 years old.”
The overall goals, he said, are money and increased hang time (length of time someone stays on the site)—ideally six hours a day. Papantonio clarified it’s not about how many people go the platform, it’s about the time spent there.
“In the big picture, that’s low, (the six-hour a day goal). You have kids that are on there, virtually from the time they wake up until the time they go to bed,” he said, adding there is an effort to establish a consortium of lawyers nationwide to hold the social media industry accountable.
“Two people that you are going to hear from tonight, as a matter of fact, basically started this litigation. They did all of the hard work. They gathered all of the information, and they made all of the sacrifices because they were wholly committed to the idea that social media is killing our children—literally.”
One of those lawyers, Glenn S. Draper with the Social Media Victims Law Center, spoke at the town hall via Zoom. He shared tactics used by the social media industry to attract children.
Draper also recently served as counsel in the K.G.M. vs. Meta and Google landmark case in California. His firm represented K.G.M., a 20-year-old who was addicted to social media and was awarded a $6 million settlement in March. TikTok and Snapchat were also parties in the suit but settled before the trial.
As a teenager, K.G.M. spent 17 hours a day on Instagram and watched 175,000 TikTok videos between Sept. 10, 2023, and Sept. 16, 2024, it was revealed in court. And despite some social media companies claiming they don’t allow young teens to set up profiles, K.G.M. established a YouTube account at age 6, an Instagram account at 9 and Snapchat at 11.
The California lawsuit was the second successful suit against the social media industry. Also in March, New Mexico became the first state to win a suit again Meta and was awarded $375 million in damages. New Mexico’s Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Meta in 2023 under the state’s Unfair Practices Law.
Earlier lawsuits were filed against social media companies but Draper said Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shields providers and users of interactive computer services (Meta, YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, etc.) from liability for third-party content posted on their sites.
“The solution that my partner, Matt (Matthew P. Bergman,) came up with was we were going to focus on the features of these platforms, not on the content that was affecting children,” Draper said, explaining earlier lawsuits had claimed parties were harmed by social media content.
“….So we focused on their roles as the operators and designers of these platforms and incorporating these addictive features into their platforms,” Draper said.
Addictive features of social media apps
The features named in the lawsuit were:
- Algorithms optimized for watch time to keep children on the platform
- Infinite scroll
- Auto play
- Social validation metrics (likes, comments)
- Notifications (communications from the platforms to users)
“These notifications are very, very carefully designed to get people on the platform. They are deliberately spaced out so they don’t all come in a bunch to keep you coming back to the platform. So, you might get one every half an hour, instead of getting three in close proximity,” Draper said.
- Gamification features
- Account recommendation features
“Many of the platforms have algorithms built in that recommend you to all or particular accounts to communicate with certain people. Often those features will connect kids with pedophiles or with drug dealers who mean to do them harm,” he said.
Attendees also heard firsthand accounts of the impact of social media addiction from local experts.
Joanna Johannes, head of school at Lighthouse Private Christian Academy, shared an incident where a usually mild-mannered student physically attacked an employee because she asked for his cellphone.
Brown also encouraged parents to learn the functionality of their child’s cellphone, especially if they have different operating systems than they are used to.
“I’m an iPhone person. So if my kid has an Android, I need to learn how to work an Android,” he said, adding parents need to be:
- Be knowledgeable about social media platforms
- Learn social media terminology such as “Snap Score” (a numerical representation of a user’s amount of Snapchat activity) and ask your child their score
He said when he last asked his daughter her Snap Score, it was “a shockingly low” 119,000.
“I’ve talked to some people and their kids’ (scores) are in the millions. I’m talking about 13 years old,” Brown said, noting a “crazy high” scores indicate a child is on that social media app a lot.
“Know those platforms. Know those little tell-tells about these platforms, so you know if your kid is getting to that pre-addiction or addictive side of it. That’s one of the easier ways to do it and figure out what is going on. And talk to them, talk to them, talk to them. I can’t stress that enough.”
Brown also urged parents to go to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website for more tips.
What Parents Can Do?
- Delay social media until age 15
- No phones in bedrooms overnight
- Set hard daily limits
- “No phone zones” at meals or family time
- Explain to your child how algorithms work
- Know the warning signs of social media addiction
Source: Levin Papantonio
