Tech's tobacco trial arrives as teens abandon screens for AI

The Meta trial unfolding in Oakland this week represents the culmination of years of criticism over how social platforms engineer engagement and keep teenagers scrolling. The case distills a central accusation: that companies deliberately use design strategies to sustain teen attention on feeds, treating engagement as the primary metric and addiction as an acceptable byproduct. Yet the timing reveals a fundamental mismatch between legal accountability and technological reality. The industry has already begun retreating from screen-based interaction, redirecting investment toward AI agents that operate invisibly—summarizing messages, organizing tasks, potentially automating household work—where the addiction mechanics of a endlessly-scrolling feed no longer apply.

Parallel to this structural shift is a sharp reversal in how young people themselves perceive AI. The same Gallup data showing nearly half of young adults now view AI as harmful (up from 27% just a year prior) suggests that the cultural moment for AI enthusiasm among teens has already peaked. Luddite clubs on college campuses and the commercial success of a non-AI animated film in China—produced by an amateur mother-son duo rather than algorithmic generation—point to a genuine backlash. This means that even as tech companies face court pressure over the social harms of past platforms, they are simultaneously encountering skepticism about the technological direction they are pivoting toward. The Big Tobacco litigation may vindicate critics on the specifics of screen-based social media, but by then the industry's centers of gravity will have shifted elsewhere—and teen behavior will have shifted along with it.