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Question Everything
I Was 11 When Instagram Took Over My Life
00:42:58
When Taylor Little got on Instagram at 11 years old, they had no idea it would pull them into a dark world of self harm and suicide that would consume their childhood.
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- [00:01]
A
Support for Question Everything comes from Loyola Marymount University. At lmu, curiosity isn't just encouraged, it's expected. Because the world doesn't change when we accept things as they are. It changes when we ask better questions. What if business could be a force for good? What if storytelling could spark real impact? What if the future of Los Angeles and beyond starts with bold thinking grounded in purpose? At lmu, students explore big ideas across disciplines, guided by a commitment to innovation, ethics and community. It's a place where asking why leads to discovering what's next. Because progress doesn't come from easy answers. It comes from questioning everything. Learn more at lmu.eduardo Something wild happened two weeks ago that I really wasn't sure I'd ever see, which is that Meta and Google were found liable for creating social media apps that they knew were harmful to kids. A jury in LA found that the companies designed Instagram and YouTube to hook people in a way that was leading to major mental health problems. Evidence came out in trial showing YouTube was designed using the same behavioral playbook as slot machines, unpredictable rewards that keep you coming back, and internal messages came out between Meta employees comparing Instagram to a drug and themselves to drug pushers. The verdict is a sea change. It opens the door for people to hold technology companies responsible for the way kids and adults possibly get information on the Internet. We don't know yet what it will unleash. For better or worse. As you know, this is something I've been thinking about and working through a lot on this show. Last week I talked to one of the lawyers at the center of the case in la. This week I speak to a young person whose case is one of the thousands coming up next. And just to let you know, we will be discussing self harm and attempted suicide.
- [01:59]
B
I remember in fifth grade was when people started getting Instagrams and stuff and I was like, that's dumb. I was like, that's ridiculous. I'm gonna go ride my bike.
- [02:09]
A
This is Taylor Little. Taylor's 23 now, but they were 11 when they got their first social media account. There's a lot of debate from lawyers and experts over what the implications are now that the tech companies might be on the hook for what someone like Taylor went through. But I think to really understand this whole situation you got to hear from people like Taylor directly.
- [02:28]
B
Sixth grade it was a big shift where everyone was on social media and I started I think caring a bit more about social stuff and there was that sort of social incentive that everyone was on it and I I made a snapchat and an Instagram and I think maybe a Tumblr 2 all at once.
- [02:49]
A
Back then, Taylor identified as a girl, but now goes by they and them. Taylor was under Instagram's age limit, so they lied about their age when they signed up.
- [02:57]
B
I used my brother's birthday. I remember doing that. You just have to put in a birthday. There's no barrier beyond that. And I knew my brother was more than 13, so that worked.
- [03:09]
A
Did it give you pause at all? Were you like, I'm not supposed to be on this?
- [03:14]
B
No.
- [03:16]
A
Remember this was 2013. Social media in general was still quite new and Instagram had only been around since 2010. I know it's tricky to get back into this headspace, but parents were still figuring out what Instagram was. I found this article on the tech site CNET from 2012 by a mom who was trying to inform other parents that Instagram, quote, may as well be a social network and not just a photo sharing app. When my daughter asked permission to download the app, she wrote, I was frankly excited that she was showing interest in photography. I love using the app and was unaware of the age restriction.
- [03:48]
B
And so I think my mom was like, cool, looks safe, it's fine.
- [03:53]
A
Taylor followed their friends. They were into dance and theater, so they followed some dance accounts too. And then one day Taylor says Instagram sent them a notification just on my home screen.
- [04:04]
B
Said like, check out this account.
- [04:06]
A
Taylor says they hadn't followed this account and that the suggestion from Instagram didn't give them details about what the account was, that the app just pinged them to check it out.
- [04:15]
B
And so I followed that and was taken to somebody's personal account where they documented their self harm. It was just full of images they had taken after they cut themselves with fresh wounds and videos and things.
- [04:34]
A
How graphic were these images?
- [04:36]
B
Very graphic. They were. They were fresh. They were. Somebody had cut themselves 30 seconds before. They are open wounds. They are bleeding. They are. Is gore. It was gore.
- [04:48]
A
Taylor was 11 years old. Taylor was about to experience years of severe life altering mental health issues which they are now suing metaphor. And while Taylor doesn't believe social media was the only factor, they do point to this moment, this invitation from Instagram to visit someone's graphic photo diary of self harm. And then the type of accounts and posts that Instagram fed them over the next five years as a huge part of what caused their suffering.
- [05:18]
B
I couldn't even really process what was put in front of me. I don't, I didn't understand. I'd never seen Instagram used this way. Like this was an app for sharing pictures of your friends and posting memes, you know, so it was very jarring, very shocking.
- [05:35]
A
The young woman who just won in la, her name is Kaylee. She did testify in court, but her trial wasn't recorded, it wasn't broadcast. So the wider public has not gotten to hear her story from her in her own words. That's why I wanted to talk to Taylor, so you can listen to their story and suss out for yourself how much are social media companies to blame.
- [05:55]
B
It was shown to me without my consent. My feed was flooded without my consent. I was targeted by Instagram
- [06:06]
A
from KCRW and Placement Theory. This is Question Everything. I'm Brian Reed. While there are difficult parts of Taylor's story, I'm happy to say that Taylor's healthy and safe now. And talking to them was one of the most illuminating interviews I've done in a long time. So I hope you stick around. Support for Question Everything comes from Loyola Marymount University. At lmu, curiosity isn't just encouraged, it's expected. Because the world doesn't change when we accept things as they are. It changes when we ask better questions. What if business could be a force for good? What if storytelling could spark real impact? What if the future of Los Angeles and beyond starts with bold thinking grounded in purpose? At lmu, students explore big ideas across disciplines, guided by a commitment to innovation, ethics and community. It's a place where asking why leads to discovering what's next. Because progress doesn't come from easy answers. It comes from questioning everything. Learn more at lmu.edu. Before sixth grade, before they got drawn into the dark recesses of social media, Taylor says, they were a happy, gregarious kid.
- [07:24]
B
Dude, I would not shut up. I was very, yeah, very chatterbox.
- [07:31]
A
Taylor grew up in Butte, Montana, with two brothers, one older, one younger, and lots of cousins who Taylor consider siblings, along with aunts, uncles and grandparents nearby. Their parents were separated, and Taylor's mom was putting herself through school for speech pathology while waiting tables in elementary school. Things were good.
- [07:48]
B
I got my first lead role fifth grade year. I got cast as Alice in Alice in Wonderland, and that was, oh my God, the height of my life. I loved that production. I shined in it. I. I was so proud of myself. I dyed my hair blonde for. Was the first time I was allowed to dye my hair because it was for production. I really. It's hard to express, but I loved myself and I loved my life and I was confident and I was happy and I was kind and I was just. I loved. I was in love with the world. I really was. I couldn't have loved my life more. That was, I think the last, like that was the last really good, good time span I remember was during Alice. It was a very sudden switch.
- [08:46]
A
And Taylor says it really started with that suggestion from Instagram that led them to a stranger's gore filled cutting account.
- [08:52]
B
I didn't know what cutting was at that time. I have a very clear memory of Googling it pretty much immediately and going, what? What the hell is this? I scrolled through that account, I looked at it. I've described it before as when you pass a car crash and you want to look, you can't look away. It's this morbid fascination. Just like, what is this? And let me understand. And immediately that day, next day, I started receiving the post in my Explore page.
- [09:25]
A
Instagram's Explore page recommends posts from accounts you don't follow. So again, Taylor says these were not accounts they were seeking out. They were accounts and posts Instagram was delivering to them. And Taylor says it was a lot of cutting.
- [09:36]
B
I did keep clicking on them. You click on one post and it's. You can just keep clicking. Like they were really endless. Like there was, there was an extensive self harm community on Instagram. It was. You couldn't reach the end of it. And so you. Yeah, when I'm seeing those posts all the time, I didn't even. I didn't have to look for them. They just showed up. It was all I was seeing.
- [09:58]
A
And you can't remember any like, do you have any understanding or explanation for why Instagram proactively sent you a notification to look at a self harm account?
- [10:09]
B
No, dude, I was following my friends prior to that point. I used social media completely normally.
- [10:20]
A
We wrote Meta to ask about what Taylor says happened to them on Instagram. Specifically, I wanted to know if this kind of notification and if getting recommendations on the Explore page were features on Instagram back in 2013. Meta didn't respond, but we asked experts and they said what Taylor describes experiencing was possible at the time, though it might have technically been a suggestion or a recommendation and not a push notification that first came to them. The hyper personalized algorithm that we know today that came a few years into Taylor's time on the platform. But the Explore page did exist when they first signed up and did suggest content. Taylor says that's where they fell down the rabbit hole of posts about cutting.
- [10:59]
B
I looked up how people did it. Where do you get your blades. I was looking at actual methods and like, tips. I found that on people's accounts, they
- [11:14]
A
would explain where to get the blades.
- [11:17]
B
Yeah, I think I tried it that night. I think I. It was, it was. I remember it being. If not that night, it was within a week, two weeks. It was. But I remember. I remember it being immediate.
- [11:38]
A
The instantaneousness of this. See cutting content, start cutting. I found it shocking. It's hard to square sudden cutting in sixth grade with the carefree childhood that Taylor described just a year before playing Alice in Wonderland and loving life. I'm about Mark Zuckerberg's age, so I was the last generation to experience college both before and after Facebook. Over the years, as I've heard stories about teens experiences with social media, I didn't dismiss them. But I think if I'm being honest, I didn't totally understand how a social media app could lead you to hurt yourself. To me, to start cutting, I assumed you'd have to be in a state of some desperation. But Taylor says that wasn't how it was.
- [12:20]
B
I don't think I was in a desperate mind state at that time. I was still mostly happy, mostly stable. There wasn't any huge issues. I wasn't what I would describe as depressed. I've been depressed. I know what depression is like. I spent many years after this in deep depressive states. That's not where I was at. I was definitely, like beginning to struggle with some things in sixth grade, I think on a very minor level, on a level that could have been addressed. Some anxiety, some stress, some body image issues. I mean, I'd just gone through puberty. Like, I think it was a pretty normal adjustment period for the age I was at, but. But it was. Yeah, it was some sadness, some worry, but nothing, nothing overwhelming, nothing super dark.
- [13:13]
A
Taylor says they were dealing with some grief around this time. Taylor's grandmother had died when they were in fifth grade. She raised Taylor for a lot of years. They were very close. Taylor says they did not process that well. They doubt anyone in their family did. Their dad was also inconsistent at this point in their life. He suffered from addiction. Taylor says they definitely were struggling with that. Taylor did try to get support from counselors and other adults in their life, but they weren't able to provide what Taylor needed. Taylor was looking for help to deal with these emotions. And then they discovered cutting tutorials.
- [13:45]
B
Saw people saying, I feel bad and this makes me feel better. It gives me a release, it gives me an outlet. It's cathartic. And that made sense to me instead of going to the next person down the line who might have been able to offer me the help I needed and the tools I needed. I was given this other thing that they said, I feel bad and this helps. I really, I got hooked on the physical feeling of it more than anything. And I. I mean, from the moment I started, I was an everyday self harmer. I'd never. It wasn't something I did once and then like tried again a couple weeks. I did it every day, all the time.
- [14:30]
A
In addition to the self harm accounts, Taylor says soon Instagram was bombarding them with other types of posts, which they group into a couple buckets.
- [14:37]
B
There was sort of the suicidality section and that is different than you would think. It's a lot of like glamorization of suicides. There'd be like edits of scenes of suicide in movies set to pretty music and like people jumping off buildings and like this sort of very romantic take on suicide that was rampant art about nooses and guns. I mean, every once in a while there'd be graphic videos, but I can think of two specific ones in my head that were actual like filmed, like snuff videos basically of people committing suicide. But mainly it was very pretty. It was depicted as very desirable. And then there's the eating disorder content and that was a lot more instructional. It was a how to guide and diets and workouts, how to hide it. Restricting tips were a big thing. Or like thin spell pictures. So like body pictures of like starved, very disordered bodies. And then the captions would be written out. The instructional stuff, fasting guides were big.
- [16:01]
A
You're still 11 at this point.
- [16:03]
B
I am still 11 at this point.
- [16:04]
A
Do you remember what you thought of this? You start seeing stuff depicting or suggesting suicide, glamorizing suicide. Did you know about suicide at 11 and what did you make of this?
- [16:18]
B
I knew about suicide and I remember at the time not being suicidal but thinking it looked interesting. I don't, I don't know a better way to describe it, but it was a morbid fascination and it was. I did see these people finding some relief is I think the other part of it is they depicted it as desirable and beautiful and sort of coquette and cute and, you know, this sad girl aesthetic. What very quickly happened was I was seeing people on Instagram who were so deeply depressed and who were saying, I want to kill myself every single day, were ranting in these captions about suicidality, about suicidal ideation, about how they're gonna do it. Just graphic and constant descriptions. And it was almost impossible, I think, for my mind not to be led into that same state. If you read something over and over and over again, you absorb it.
- [17:33]
A
Taylor and other kids in their generation were guinea pigs essentially for what happens when you go through adolescence on social media. And researchers are still trying to figure out what the science shows about how social media affects teens. You may be familiar with Jonathan Haidt, probably the most well known person who talks about this issue. He's a social psychologist at New York University. He wrote that bestseller the Anxious Generation, about Gen Z being, well, unprecedentedly anxious. And he blames that rise in teenage mental health problems squarely on social media, on smartphones.
- [18:05]
C
What we see in the United States, when we graph out the percent of American teens who suffer from anxiety, depression, those who self harm, those who are hospitalized, what we see is very stable levels from the 1990s through 2010. And then right around 2013, 2012, suddenly a lot of curves begin going up very, very sharply.
- [18:25]
A
This is right when Taylor was first getting on social media at age 11.
- [18:29]
C
We see the same thing in the UK and the same thing in Canada, the same thing in Australia, the same thing in New Zealand, the same thing in the Scandinavian countries and northern Europe. So something happened globally, something happened in the early 2000 and tens that sent teen mental health spiraling downward. Only theory on the table for why you'd have a global change is the massive change in their daily lives when they adopted a phone based childhood.
- [18:56]
A
Those two shifts, the rise in teen mental health problems and the rise of social media happen at the exact same time, Haidt says. So what else could have caused the problems? But other experts say that while these trends coincided, researchers have not found evidence proving that social media causes mental health issues in teens. So could the relationship maybe be the other way around? In fact, there is evidence that kids already struggling with mental health problems do use social media more than other kids. But it's still not clear from the research what the effect of that is. It's not clear from the science if social media makes a bad situation for those teens worse. But Taylor says in their experience, it absolutely did. They told me after the cutting posts and the suicide posts, Instagram started showing them content about eating disorders, about being skinny. Is that something that you had struggled with previously or to what extent had you?
- [19:49]
B
This is a little trickier. I had just experienced female puberty and I'm non binary, so I was dealing with intense physical dysphoria at that time and I didn't have a word for that yet. And I didn't understand why, but I was extremely uncomfortable in my body. I hated my body. And so I think I sort of knew that I didn't have the same body image issues that girls my age had. I didn't have the same concerns. It was a different type of discomfort. So I was very eager, honestly, to. To make my body more comfortable to me. And I, yeah, I latched onto that pretty quickly. I did have, like, friendships on there.
- [20:40]
A
You're using air quotes.
- [20:42]
B
They were very destructive, I think, to be called friendships. No one ever had anyone's best interest in mind in those relationships.
- [20:51]
A
What were you talking about?
- [20:52]
B
There's a term called antibodies, which is people that you meet on Ed, Instagram, eating disorder, Instagram, and become friends with so you can hold each other accountable and help each other fast to restrict together to help talk you out of eating. Like basically disorder buddies.
- [21:13]
A
You would do that with people, be like, I didn't eat anything today. How about you?
- [21:17]
B
How about you?
- [21:18]
D
Yep.
- [21:19]
A
Taylor was hiding all of this from the people in their real life. Their parents, their family. They were hiding the cutting, their eating habits. The one thing it was hard to hide was their social media use, which exploded quickly.
- [21:33]
B
At one point, I had worked it out and averaged like 8 to 10 hours. Cause I would. I mean, I'd wake up on Instagram. I'd be on Instagram all day at school. I'd come home, I'd lay in bed, I'd be on Instagram.
- [21:45]
A
Wait, how are you on Instagram all
- [21:47]
B
day at school, in between classes? Under your underground? That's hilarious. You clearly haven't been to an elementary school in a while.
- [21:55]
A
My kid's in elementary school, but they banned phones.
- [21:58]
B
See, that's great. That was a big part of why I was struggling so much in classes was because I'd be checking stuff under my desk in class. I'd go to the bathroom so I could be on my phone in between. It was very consuming. I struggled to stay off my phone in school.
- [22:15]
A
Taylor's mom, other adults in their life, they'd comment on their phone use, but also they thought Taylor was just obsessed with chatting with their friends. Taylor made burner accounts for viewing the cutting and suicide and eating disorder content.
- [22:28]
B
I know my mom has said she noticed the usage for sure. She noticed how excessive it was and how I was isolating because of my phone, but she had no idea what I was looking at. I mean, I was so secretive with this. And everybody who was on here was. It was very much a culture of Secrecy. And so, I mean, my family had no idea what I was looking at. I was having serious suicidal thoughts within six months of this. By my first semester of seventh grade, I was genuinely depressed. At this point, it was really becoming a clinical state I was in. So things got really, really hard for me. I was less social. I think I started smoking cigarettes that summer. I had dyed my hair black. I was pale, I was underweight. I'd been restricting. I was dying.
- [23:28]
A
Your hair is not innately bad. I just want to say no, no.
- [23:30]
B
I know I spent many, many years with every color of the rainbow. But at that time, it was me trying to achieve an aesthetic ideal that I saw promoted. It's hard to explain how much the aesthetic, aesthetic of depression and suicide was emphasized. It was really, really glamorized. And so for me, the reason that was, it was just very out of character for me and very strange to me at the time. And it was, it was because of
- [23:58]
A
the content I was seeing and what is the aesthetic.
- [24:00]
B
It's sort of like a soft goth, grunge type of deal. And so I went into seventh grade in a really dark place. I was failing classes. I did not do extracurriculars. I was not a functional human.
- [24:17]
A
After a quick break, Taylor's secret life gets found out. So I am not going to claim to be a skincare expert, but I do find myself caring more about how my skin looks as I get older. And what makes One Skin interesting to me is, is the science it's based on. They're targeting the way skin ages, not just how it looks. And the ingredient that drives everything is their OS1 peptide, which is designed to target the cells that cause your skin to age. One Skin is founded by an all woman team of longevity Scientists with PhDs in stem cell biology, skin regeneration and tissue engineering. Born from over a decade of longevity research, OneSkin's OS1 peptide is proven to target the visible signs of aging, helping you unlock your healthiest skin now and as you age. For a limited time, try one skin with 15% off using code QUESTION@OnSkin CO. QUESTION, that's 15% off at OnSkin Co with Code Question. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Taylor was 12 in seventh grade when someone discovered what they'd been so good at hiding.
- [25:35]
B
A friend in gym class saw me changing and saw my cuts, told the school, told my mom, my therapist was told we were trying to get this sorted out.
- [25:47]
A
Wait, that sounds scary. Like You've been hiding this thing that you're doing to yourself that is involved in this whole online life that's secret for. From your family and friends. Someone finds out, did they have a reaction?
- [26:01]
B
Yeah, you're gonna think poorly of my mother. But she. I think her gut instinct was, what do you have to be sad about? I think that's what she said to me driving me home from school that day. Cause the counselor had called her in. She took me home early.
- [26:15]
A
I don't think poorly of her. I feel for her.
- [26:18]
B
I know, and I feel that way too.
- [26:21]
A
Soon after Taylor's mom found out about the cutting, she also heard Taylor making themself throw up. That's how their mom learned about the eating disorder. And shortly after that, their mom found a journal of Taylor's where they'd written about being suicidal.
- [26:33]
B
So it was. It was one thing after the other. It was within, like, three, four months that all of this was coming out. And it just kept piling up. It was so quickly from Taylor's great and happy and healthy to my mom being like, taylor needs help. Where do we do? So I think, yeah, my mom was very frightened and overwhelmed. And again, we lived in Butte, Montana, where there's, I think, two therapists in the whole town, maybe one. And she was lovely. But it just. There was not a wealth of resources or education or understanding.
- [27:11]
A
Was there discussion like, social media is playing a part of this at this point?
- [27:16]
B
Not at this point. Nobody knew about it.
- [27:19]
A
I talked to Taylor's mom, Carissa. She told me it never occurred to her that social media could be playing a role in the struggles Taylor began facing.
- [27:26]
D
I think I was pretty blind to any sort of fears.
- [27:30]
A
Carissa wasn't a big social media person herself, but her older son had been on MySpace. Her grandmother was on Facebook. The thing she focused on talking to Taylor and her kids about was not meeting up with strangers you might interact with online. But that was it.
- [27:43]
D
It just didn't seem dangerous. There was a lot of that attachment to the phone. But again, there was no recognition that that was the cause or the source of any of the behaviors and changes we were seeing. Taylor was a typical age to be spending a lot of time in the room after dinner, on the phone with their friends. Taylor always was a big reader, a big journaler. So of course they want their phone. Of course they're tied to their friends if they're. Of course they're spending more time alone in the room. So, no, the initial counselors, the initial treatment, the initial everything, nothing Talked about the phone or phone use or social media. It was fairly unknown and unrecognized, not just amongst myself, but amongst all of the many professionals we worked with. We were just sitting there scratching our heads. What happened to this kiddo?
- [28:31]
A
Did you ever take a look at what they were doing on their phone or on social media?
- [28:35]
D
Not that I could recall. I don't know that I fully understood the connection between social media and everything Tay went through until Taylor came out as an adult and went, hey, this was a huge effect and this is where all of that came from.
- [28:55]
A
What did you think when they told you this? That there was this whole world going on on Instagram, essentially that was like basically the biggest part of what they were experiencing or a huge part of it, and you just had no idea.
- [29:09]
D
I guess for me, I thought it makes a lot of sense. It makes so much more sense than anything else for why this healthy, happy, well adjusted child just within six months turned to dark depression, depressed, suicidal self, harm, starving ourselves. It never made sense why it went south so fast. I can look back and tell you for sure. Taylor had a great support system around them. They had parents, they had cousins, they had aunts, uncles, grandparents. They just, they had a beautiful support system around them. In a world without social media, Taylor would have turned to those people. And in a world with social media, they went and found that support in a much more unhealthy way.
- [29:55]
A
In March of Taylor's seventh grade year, after their mom learned about the cutting, the eating disorder, the suicidal journal entries, Taylor's great grandmother pitched in so the family could get Taylor treatment. They put Taylor in a program out of state.
- [30:07]
B
By the time I went to treatment, I truly was a physical danger to myself.
- [30:12]
A
After six weeks, insurance cut them off. Taylor went into outpatient therapy, got on medication. Taylor and their mom ended up moving to Colorado to have access to better care options. But Taylor says at this point their treatment was mostly targeting their eating disorder, taking it down to a still persistent but not immediately life threatening level. Taylor says the treatment wasn't addressing the underlying issues. One night at the beginning of eighth grade, when they were 13 years old, Taylor attempted suicide.
- [30:39]
B
My mom, she'd woke up with a terrible feeling and she said, I, I need to check on Taylor.
- [30:45]
A
Taylor's mom found them face down in the middle of the floor with bottles of pills under the bed. She called the paramedics. Taylor was rushed to the children's hospital in Denver, intubated and put in a medically induced coma for several days, basically
- [30:59]
B
just waiting for me to pull through. And I did wake up, thank God. I tried to talk. My mom said don't talk, don't talk, we need to take the tube out. I was, the intubation was removed and the first thing I said was where is my phone? I need to check Instagram. I woke up feeling very disappointed and defeated. So I did like an acute hospital stay after that. But I wasn't grateful to be alive.
- [31:36]
A
And then it happened again.
- [31:39]
B
Yes, it was two years later. My ideation was so constant I was put on 72 hour holds a lot. I think I had like 15 acute hospitalizations in like 2 years. If I wasn't hospitalized, I was going to outpatient therapy. I was always having my meds managed.
- [31:58]
A
What do you think would have happened if somebody had said lets cut off Taylor's social media accounts, take away their phone?
- [32:08]
B
Um, I think it would have fixed the problem.
- [32:12]
A
Taylor says this with such certainty because they have a data point. Until their second suicide attempt, the longest their insurance would ever cover for residential treatment was six weeks. And during those six weeks Taylor wouldn't have access to their phone or to social media.
- [32:26]
B
Once you get even basically stabilized before you can do any of the deep work, insurance goes great, you're stable, go home. And so I would hit six weeks, I would get sent home and I'd get right back on social media and I'd backslide pretty much immediately.
- [32:43]
A
But after the second suicide attempt, Taylor was able to qualify for a Colorado state fund for high risk kids where nearly 100% of mental health care treatment was covered. This finally allowed them to go to treatment for a longer period of time. They went to an inpatient residential program in Denver for more than a year. And the whole time no social media and I stabilized.
- [33:06]
B
I did therapy, I evened out and I came home and I've been good since then. I've been good since then. I'm not perfect. I have, you know, I have relapses, I have my struggles, I still go to therapy, but I am medicated, I am stable, I don't self harm anymore, I don't have an eating disorder anymore and I'm not suicidal anymore.
- [33:32]
A
And how do you know what to attribute to that? To being without your phone and social media for such a long time. And like what is pretty intensive mental health intervention basically and treatment, I think
- [33:45]
B
they're hard to separate. But I, I mean I, I, I experienced withdrawals at any hospital. The first few weeks I was not compliant and I was a pain and I could not do the work because I wanted my damn phone and I wanted it right then. I was. It was like a real behavioral problem. So I definitely had the experience of I couldn't effectively do treatment until I got past that point of literally itching for the phone. So of course the treatment is the reason I was able to get better, but the reason that I couldn't achieve that treatment before was because of the phone. It was a barrier. I mean, it was like an active antagonist to everything I was learning and trying to put in place. I truly believe the only reason I was able to get to that point of stability and actually, like, get back to normal brain functioning enough to do the work I needed to do it was because I did not have social media.
- [34:52]
A
Even after treating the eating disorder, their depression and suicidal ideation after stopping the cutting, Taylor says they still battled a social media addiction for years. More. Meta and other tech companies point out that social media addiction is not a formal psychological diagnosis the way alcohol or gambling addictions are. In the LA trial, Meta executives said they prefer the term problematic. But Meta's own internal documents that came out through the LA case use the term addiction and say things like, quote, instagram is the worst platform for mental health and teens are hooked despite how it makes them feel. And the jury found that Instagram was addictive. Taylor says it took until they were 20 years old to really think of it that way as an addiction.
- [35:36]
B
It kind of came to me just all like, overnight. I kind of had to come to Jesus moment. I was like, I am addicted to Instagram. I can't stop. Like, I can't. I have to stop. Like, I'm spending so much time on this app and it doesn't make me feel good. I was in denial for a long time that I even had a problem because it is embarrassing. It is. It feels like a moral failure. It feels like, how did I let myself get like.
- [36:05]
A
To this point, Even in your early 20s, you were still feeling addicted to it?
- [36:09]
B
Oh, yeah. It was long after I'd separated from the harmful content.
- [36:14]
A
Taylor's suing Instagram now, one of the thousands of people who are, because they believe the company bears responsibility for what happened to them. Taylor's case is separate from the one in la. They're repped by a different law firm, Motley Rice, but their lawyers are using the same argument. They say it's the design features of Instagram, the algorithm, the notifications, the explore page, infinite scrolling that caused Taylor's emotional problems or made them worse. And specifically that Instagram used these features to addict tailor to the app. If you heard our episode last week, you know this focus on the design is important because if a lawsuit is focused on the content of the posts, the fact that users are showing self harm or glamorizing suicide, then the suit probably wouldn't be allowed to go forward. There are experts and lawyers who are worried about the success of the LA case because they argue you can't separate content from design in these social media apps. They say the design is only dangerous because of the content it's serving you. And that content, whether you like it or not, is protected speech. What if these cases succeed and companies start closing off parts of their platform or censoring content? Or more governments step in like Australia just did, and ban social media for teens entirely. That could end up hurting lots of people who turn to the Internet for support and connection, including kids like Taylor, LGBTQ kids, because social media is often where they find community. Here's someone expressing this worry about the social media ban in Australia.
- [37:45]
B
Some people use it as like a lifeline for like escaping reality and like entering digital world, finding a community that like accepts you as a person and like what you are.
- [37:59]
A
So I was curious to hear what Taylor made of this.
- [38:01]
B
I've seen like people make that argument online a lot, but I was on like queer Tumblr, queer Instagram. I think I was like a mod on like a queer Instagram account, which is like a big thing at that time. I had a lot of like healthy online friends that I met that at that time that were separate from the other usage. So I, more than most people can definitely speak to the value of it. Especially, you know, growing up in Montana, like I am a non binary lesbian. I needed that community. But for me, I, I would trade that. The harm I experienced just so massively outweighed the good that I got from it.
- [38:49]
A
Do you have friends who disagree with you on this at all? Or like other, you know, queer people, you know, who are like, no, it actually was a lifeline for me.
- [38:57]
B
Honestly, not in real life. There's a reason it's such an ongoing debate. I understand that it's a complicated issue. Freedom of speech is very important. I think that censorship is very slippery and tricky, but they make a platform that they know kids are on. At the end of the day, I think they need to either not allow kids on their platform or understand that they have a responsibility to protect kids from the content they host.
- [39:27]
A
When Taylor said this to me, I could picture their lawyers banging their heads against the wall just a little bit. The LA case focused narrowly on Instagram and YouTube's addictive design features. But when you hear Taylor tell their story, they can't help but talk about the content, the cutting images, the sad girl aesthetic. All that stuff's going to be much harder to hold Meta accountable for in court. Today, Taylor is completely off social media.
- [39:55]
B
I have a flip phone. I switched, I think, March of last year, so it's been, I guess, like a full year now. You can see I bedazzled it. It's kind of falling apart. I needed re super glue, but it was just like a plain black model. And then that made me a little sad, so I added glitter and I made a little. A little charm chain and things.
- [40:16]
A
So to stay grounded, Taylor's developed a kind of spiritual practice, I guess you'd call it, that includes meditation, prayer, journaling. Also a cauldron.
- [40:26]
B
This is my cauldron. This is like, my main dish I use for actual, like, ritual spell work.
- [40:34]
A
Taylor told me that part of what drew them to cutting when they were younger was the ritual of it. Now they've replaced that with a healthier one.
- [40:41]
B
I think there's something about social media and technology that sort of just takes you out of your body. You're in this sort of third space. And I think it's been a real battle for me learning how to come back into myself and be just, like, fully situated in the present world.
- [41:00]
A
I mean, talking to you, I'm just experiencing so much sadness. And, yes, for, like, the specific elements of your story, which I'm so sorry about, Taylor, but also just the overarching feeling that your childhood was stolen from you. Yeah. I'm so glad you got better. It took a year and a half of you going away, like, leaving a normal American childhood experience.
- [41:25]
B
Yeah, that's been. I mean, it's been a big point of mourning for me, honestly. I mean, I didn't graduate high school. I did a medical withdrawal from high school because I couldn't show up. I got my ged. I've gotten to have a pretty normal college experience, I think, which I'm really grateful for. But, yeah, I don't. I don't really feel like I was ever a teenager. And it's hard because you're only a teenager once. Like, I can't. You can't remake those experiences. And so it is. Yeah, it's. It's definitely a point of sadness for me. It's something I've had to mourn and had to come to terms with, but I think I mean, what I come back to is I'm alive.
- [42:19]
A
Taylor points out there are lots of kids who aren't. Many of the people suing Meta and other social media companies in the mass litigations right now are families who lost their children to suicide. If you or anyone you know has been having suicidal thoughts, please know you can contact the 24 hour National Suicide Lifeline by dialing or texting 988. There's someone to talk to there. The website is 988 lifeline.org if you want to hear more from my interview with Taylor, go sign up for our substack@question everything.substack.com if you like this episode, please text it to a friend. Today's show was produced by Sam Egan with help from Sophie Kazis. It was edited by Neil Drumming. Kevin Sullivan, along with Zoe Chase, Robin Semian and I are the executive producers of Question Everything. Our team also includes producer Zach St. Louis, contributing editor Jen Kinney and Associate producer Kevin Shepard. This episode was fact checked by Annika Robbins. Matt Tierney did the mixing and sound design. Our music is by Matt McGinley. Thanks to Sam Fuqua for producing this interview in the field and Hannah Gallagher. Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Seifel, Tejala Jamara, Dana Lee Hill and Jennifer Farrow. We'll see you next time.