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Will social media addiction follow the same path as cigarettes?

2026-04-25 19:48:00, Sociale CNA

This year has brought many articles comparing social media addiction to smoking, while authorities and courts are increasing pressure on technology platforms.

It's easy to see why critics hope for a smoking-like turnaround. In the mid-20th century, nearly half of U.S. adults smoked.

By 2020, that rate had fallen to around 13%. But the story had a bitter end: many of the poorest remained addicted. Could the same thing happen with social media?

As Allan M. Brandt writes, smoking was once “a product and behavior with mass appeal.” Social media was also widely used in its early decades: it was not uncommon to see a Hollywood star as obsessed with Facebook as a teenager on the bus.

But when researchers linked smoking to lung cancer, the first to react were the more educated. One study shows that the decline in smoking among them began as early as 1954, shortly after the first publications.

In the 1980s, the decline took on a clear social dimension. One woman who quit smoking due to social pressure said: “I read that a third still smoke. Where are they? I don’t know any.”

Predictions at the time varied: some thought that tobacco would disappear within 20–25 years, others that it would reinforce social inequalities. Today we know that the latter proved to be correct.

Quitting addictive habits is harder for those with less education, support and access to healthcare. In Britain, people in the poorest areas are more than three times as likely to smoke as those in the richest areas.

Although the aim was to reduce the rate to 5% by 2030, a report warned that without additional measures this target will not be achieved and the poorest areas will not reach it until 2044. Smoking remains the “leading cause of health inequalities”, explaining half of the difference in life expectancy.

Could the same thing happen with social networks?

Today, efforts to limit their use in children appear to be led mainly by middle-class parents, while there are indications that young people from less affluent families more often experience negative effects.

However, there are differences. Unlike smoking, social media algorithms adapt to the user.

An adult who spends time watching cat videos may be wasting time, but not necessarily their health. Similarly, new technologies, such as AI-powered chatbots, could replace social media and create similar concerns.

The main lesson from tobacco is clear: addictive products can survive even after they lose mass popularity.

And when they are also harmful, they not only reflect inequalities, they deepen them./Financial Times