Will Removing Likes and Endless Scroll Save Teens?

The courtroom is warming up. It smells like a turning point.

Thirty US states, from California to New York, are lining up against Meta in a sprawling lawsuit that could force a rethink of how Instagram and Facebook are built. The plaintiffs accuse the company of violating privacy and of designing features that hook young users, seeking damages that top €930 billion.

A demand to rewrite the product playbook

The states want more than money. They have asked for sweeping design changes aimed at the interfaces that keep teens glued to their screens. Think of it as a legal attempt to redesign attention itself.

• Parental verification for teen accounts
• Removal of face-altering filters
• Stopping autoplay for videos
• Banning creation of duplicate accounts
• Ending disappearing formats like Instagram Stories

Why these moves? Prosecutors say algorithms, constant notifications, and endless scroll are engineered to spike dopamine and make young people dependent on the platforms. The claim is blunt: the product mechanics are not neutral tools but purpose-built hooks.

Meta’s response was immediate. A company spokesperson said the allegations are strongly denied and insisted the firm’s long-standing efforts to protect young people will be made clear in court. Short sentence. Important claim.

Judge Evan Gonzalez Rogers of the federal court in California will oversee the case. This isn’t happening in isolation. Other proceedings across the country have already produced heavy consequences. A judge in New Mexico recently fined Meta roughly €876 million, finding the company contributed to a public mental-health problem.

The stakes are both technical and ethical. Change the rules of engagement—no likes, no endless feed—and you change user behavior. You also change the economics underpinning targeted ads and content reach. Platforms have always adapted. This time the nudge could come from a judge’s gavel rather than product analytics.

Is removing visible likes a cure or a cosmetic? Hiding like counts removes one social metric, yes. It reduces immediate public validation. But does it stop algorithms from measuring attention behind the scenes? Not necessarily. The interface can be redesigned, but the data model is another beast entirely.

Legal pressure could push companies to make more transparent trade-offs. Maybe autoplay dies. Maybe filters that distort self-image disappear. Maybe sign-ups for teenagers require parental oversight. Or maybe the platforms fight these demands and keep iterating until the courts tell them otherwise.

What should readers take away? The question is not technical only. It’s a societal decision about what we want social media to reward. The current case asks: are we willing to regulate how attention is engineered? Expect a mix of courtroom drama, policy shifts, and product experiments.

So, will deleting likes and halting endless scroll reduce harm? It would help. But it won’t be a silver bullet. The deeper task is to rethink incentives and make safety a first-class design goal, not an afterthought. That’s the real work ahead.