An app designed to combat social media addiction has witnessed a significant increase in new users following a pivotal court ruling that held Meta and Google accountable for intentionally creating platforms that captivate young audiences.
Kenneth Schlenker, the founder of Opal, a prominent app for managing screen time, shared with the California Post that interest in his app has skyrocketed since the trial commenced. Schlenker noted that people are increasingly acknowledging the challenges posed by social media.
“While awareness has been there for some time, the lawsuit and court verdict have made the issue more tangible,” Schlenker remarked, highlighting the app’s daily growth in users.
On Wednesday, a Los Angeles jury sided with a 20-year-old woman, identified only as Kaley, who contended that the platforms were intentionally designed to be addictive. She argued that features such as infinite scrolling and autoplay contributed to her fixation on these apps from a young age.
Schlenker mentioned to the Post that, interestingly, the majority of Opal’s 10 million users are individuals who have grown up alongside social media.
“About two-thirds of our users are students,” he explained, referring to both high school and college attendees.
“The interesting part is no one’s telling them to do it. They’re doing it on their own because they see the difference that it’s making in their own life and they want to learn a skill. They actually want to learn how to deal with technology.”
The tech exec started his career at Google in 2008, working on a team that designed some of the very platforms that were highlighted in the trial.
“We worked on a number of things to help predict behavior and help influence behavior,” Schlenker told the Post.
“Can we predict the unemployment rate in the United States using Google queries, can we predict whether the user is a pregnant woman, for example, that kind of research that then powered a lot of the decisions that came later to keep optimizing those systems for more and more engagement.”
That experience helping build the very systems of addiction was the catalyst behind Schlenker wanting to create Opal.
“It’s a slow realization process because back then people didn’t have smartphones or everybody didn’t have smartphones, and social media was a very early stage thing.
“But, what I saw was that when you put a bunch of very, very smart people on solving a problem — like how do you actually get more and more people to engage with your product — they figure it out,” Schlenker said.
“I was worried about this and I actually built a business plan for Opal back then in 2012, but it took me 10 more years before I decided it was a problem big enough that it deserved an actual solution.”
The tech giants were found liable for $3 million in compensatory damages and another $3 million in punitive damages, with Meta paying the bulk of the money and Google forking up 30%.
Both Google and Meta said they disagreed with the verdict and would appeal.
Schlenker compared the ruling to a “tobacco moment,” holding tech giants liable for the first time for their design choices that fuel addiction and provides an opportunity for real change.
“It’s not directly only comparable to cigarettes, because that’s the difficult part, social media does have great sides to it too, but it does cause harm — this is what the ruling says. And so maybe it doesn’t belong everywhere,” he said.
But it’s not without risk — the key is balance, and not creating a chilling effect that could stifle innovation.
“You don’t smoke in schools, maybe you don’t TikTok in schools,” Schlenker told The Post.
