This major city is suing all of social media

Yep. All the social media heavy hitters. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube have all been named in the suit with NYC, which aims to hold the platforms responsible for the increase in mental health problems for young people. The city is seeking damages, which it would use to fund prevention education and mental health treatment.

On the one hand, rallying for teen mental health and body image is a good cause. But there’s no precedent for something like this, even though media companies have influenced mental health and body image for decades. If we were to extrapolate this suit, cities should be suing movies that showcase unrealistic body expectations, magazines like Cosmopolitan that spent the last 30 years telling women how to diet, and television shows like America’s Next Top Model.

It’s a slippery slope as far as who’s responsible for children’s mental health: is it the apps? The users? The parents? Do these platforms need age restrictions (like alcohol and nicotine)? Or do we need to provide better emotional training to teens and young adults to help them cope with the current landscape?  

What does this mean for you? There’s a lot to unpack here, especially if you have young adults or teens in your life. It will be interesting to follow how this turns out. Cities should always prioritize mental health — but it remains to be seen whether this method will have much effect.

🎥 What's Trending

With more than 14,000 shares and more than 16 million views, this video takes something simple that almost everyone can understand and relate to (like driving) — and shows you how to do it better.

The best part of this video is there are absolutely no words involved. It’s a complete visual description of how to do something that a lot of people don’t know how to learn (except through reps). This helpful video shows them how to hack it.

Your takeaway: Is there a visual hack (even a short one!) you could show someone to help them improve how to do something? This could be anything from a pilates move to a helpful tip for filling out an Excel spreadsheet. Visual education is extremely powerful — especially in short-form video format.