Rarely has the spotlight of scrutiny been so intense for Silicon Valley as the one currently bearing down on Big Tech. For many years, parents and lawmakers alike have raised red flags over social media and its powers of addiction. The autoplay. The endless scrolling. The curated content served time and again by the ever-mysterious algorithm.

Many of these concerns have been echoed by campaign groups and even former employees such as Arturo Bejar, who recently described Instagram as having fundamentally changed “from a product you used, to a product that uses you” in that user engagement is everything in the pursuit of profit. The lifeblood that keeps the lights on in an attention economy.

Parent company Meta has consistently denied such claims, yet back-to-back verdicts in California and New Mexico last month have now laid the blame squarely at Meta’s digital doorstep. Ditto for Google, with juries also deeming its YouTube app to be deliberately addictive and engineered in such a way as to be negligent in the safeguarding of its younger users.

Both companies have signalled their intention to appeal the verdicts, yet these landmark losses may well amount to a public reckoning for social media more broadly. A ‘big tobacco’ moment, where the age of impunity comes screeching to an halt in high legal fees and damages, but also a tidal shift in how these platforms, prevalent that they are, ought to be regulated when there is widespread acknowledgment that Big Tech’s near-universal products – namely Instagram and YouTube in this case – are addictive by design. Freely available at our fingertips, day and night, with features engineered for compulsive use.

All those notifications and gamified rewards reflect how digital technologies can shape human behaviour. All those notifications and gamified rewards reflect how digital technologies can shape human behaviour. In a word, cyberpsychology, which was explored in great depth 10 years ago by Dr Mary Aiken, cyberpsychologist and my sister-in-law, in her book The Cyber Effect, serving as a pointed reminder of just how long it’s taken the law to catch up.

Whatever happens next, accountability has arrived that could set in motion long-lasting precedents in how social media is designed, governed and accessed especially by the children and younger users whom Meta and Google were found to have failed. This very public turning point comes not a moment too soon, either, with online child safety high on the global agenda all throughout these past 12 months, when more than two dozen countries have proposed rolling out social media bans.

Australia was first out of the gate in December with a blanket ban across 10 platforms – Instagram and YouTube included – that deactivated existing profiles of under-16s and put a hard stop on any new accounts being activated. Enforcement ever since has been patchy, with the Australian government last week accusing Big Tech firms like Meta and Google of outright disobeying the ban, after a survey among parents found 31% of children under 16 still had access to one or more social media accounts, compared to 49% before the law came into force.

Exactly how effective Australia’s approach has been in this early stage remains the subject of debate, but one thing is abundantly clear: the fluid situation Down Under continues to be watched closely by world leaders mulling over similar interventions, including here in the UK and Ireland. The former has already launched a public consultation on further measures and support for both children and their parents, while Ireland intends to explore a similar ban for under-16s as part of its wider strategy on digital and AI.

Learnings from Australia will prove invaluable in shaping each approach, because for now, one question remains without an answer: is excluding under-16s from social media the right move? Or does it speak to the long-held reluctance to regulate Big Tech that has inevitably led to a blanket ban being the last lever left to pull?

There is also the open secret that a widespread ban won’t prevent teenagers from using social media unconditionally; if anything, it will push them towards VPNs and fake accounts. Towards corners of the internet where, ironically, there are fewer safeguards in place. To that end, social media bans risk being something of a blunt instrument.

If the end goal is ‘fixing’ social through robust regulation and user-friendly features, it ought to start at the top. With the Big Tech business models that for too long have monetised our attention with little thought for the wellbeing of its younger users, in particular. For brands and creators, the eternal pillars of transparency and trust will always be critical in how a message or product is communicated to a target audience. Now more so than ever.

All of this sits in a wider debate of palpable concern around mental health, screen time and the companies behind the world’s most popular digital platforms. Five years from now, the landmark rulings against Meta and Google may be remembered as the turning point towards a more accountable future when we look back and wonder why we ever let children run free on social media in the first place.