Mark Andrews: Don't blame Zuckerberg for social-media addiction, blame Larry Hagman

Should the tech bros be made to pay out millions of pounds to young people who say they have become addicted to social media?

I’m referring of course, to the court case in Los Angeles, which ordered Facebook owner Meta and YouTube to pay £4.5 million to a 20-year-old girl who said her mental health had been severely harmed after becoming hooked on the platforms from the age of six. Some reckon this could open the floodgates to a deluge of lawsuits, empty the vast pockets of the American tech nerds, and raise questions about how we deal with the Wild West of the Worldwide Web on this side of the Atlantic.

Going back to the original question, my gut reaction is ‘yes’, throw the book at them, if only for Elon Musk’s charmless outbursts and Mark Zuckerberg’s stupid flip-flops.

While I tend to believe that people should take responsibility for their own actions, and that the attempt to medicalise every character flaw probably does more harm than good, I admit that even I have been known to find these platforms somewhat addictive.

The problem is that for all my distaste for sultans of Silicon Valley, and my belief that social media is not entirely an unalloyed force for good, I believe the courts are probably blaming the wrong people.

Because I’m fairly certain that the reason I have in the past found myself wasting 10 minutes of my life staring at Facebook clips of classic television shows is far less down to the algorithms of Zuckerberg, Musk or Jack Dorsey, and far more down to the acting abilities of Dennis Waterman, John Thaw, George Cole, Lewis Collins and Larry Hagman.

Who of course, are all dead.

Maybe that’s why television is so bad these days. Whatever you think of Love Island, Naked Attraction, or Strictly bloomin’ Come Dancing, nobody can possibly be vacuous enough to be addicted to that.

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And if you didn’t pick up on the past tense when I described my previous addiction to classic TV reels on Facebook, I am pleased to tell you that a few weeks ago I received a treatment which has instantly cured the habit.

Cataract surgery. Since having the lens in my right eye replaced, I have 20-20 vision for distances, but significantly impaired sight when looking at anything close up. I can see almost every blade of grass on the Clee Hills from my front window, but I can no longer read the small print on a restaurant menu, even with the numerous pairs of different reading glasses I now carry around with me.

And not only does having to fumble around with my spectacles mean it is usually more trouble than it’s worth to catch up on old clips of Dallas or The Sweeney, my eyes usually start stinging after two minutes, which is a pretty effective way of telling the view to stop what they’re doing at get back to something more productive.

And probably a lot cheaper than counselling and medicaction.

Wishing all readers a happy Easter.