‘They’re selling smaller bags of dope’: Spike warns Meta’s two-hour cap still feeds kids the same product

Meta has agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion to settle a landmark lawsuit brought by 47 states that accused the company of deliberately designing Facebook and Instagram to addict children.

The lawsuit alleged that Meta’s business model was built on trapping young users, collecting data on children under 13 without parental consent, and burying evidence of the harm its own researchers had documented. The states had sought roughly $200 billion in damages, and Meta settled for a fraction of that with no admission of guilt.

Jake Skorheim and Spike O’Neill, co-hosts of “The Jake and Spike Show” on KIRO Newsradio, discussed the settlement, with both arguing the dollar amount does not match the scope of what Meta did.

“That’s a parking ticket to Meta,” Spike said. “They make that in — that’s their profit margin for about a month.”

The business model was the overreach

Spike said the core problem is not how many hours children spend on the platforms; it is that Meta designed them to be addictive in the first place, knew it was happening, and chose not to stop.

“Addiction’s a good business. It’s a great business to be in,” Spike said. “Their algorithms, what they steer to your kid, it’s like they’re busing in bad friends to your kid’s neighborhood.

“It was in the internal documentation that they used mechanisms that were addictive to young minds, and they were warned by insiders,” he continued. “They said, ‘Well, our business model is to do this, so we’re not going to make these changes because our business is to be in business and make money.'”

The settlement limits hours but doesn’t change the product

Under the agreement, teenage users will be capped at two hours a day on Meta’s platforms. Push notifications will be disabled during school hours from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., and all use between midnight and 6 a.m. will be blocked without parental consent.

Spike said none of that addresses the underlying overreach.

“They’re selling smaller bags of dope,” Spike said. “OK, you’re only addicting for two hours a day instead of six. You’re still feeding people. You’re not changing your algorithm or your business model, which we know is predatory.”

Jake agreed and said the two-hour daily cap itself reveals how far Meta had gone.

“If your kid is spending two hours on any of these social media sites, run,” Jake said. “Run in the opposite direction. It’s not good. And this is just one of the sites. There’s a lot of different social media sites.”

Jake says the overreach goes beyond addiction

Jake said what alarms him most is not the screen-time mechanics but the access Meta’s platforms gave unknown actors to children, an overreach parents never consented to.

“The problem that I have with it is you are giving someone else, who is not you, influence over your children’s lives,” Jake said. “And there’s nothing more precious in this world than your kids. And you don’t know who these psychos might be. They might just be bad actors. They might be people who have horrible intent, who are just trying to get close to kids and teach them horrible things.

“Imagine a thousand of those kids that you don’t want your kids playing with, all having direct input into your kid’s life,” he continued. “And the delivery mechanism is so effective, because it’s bright and shiny and it comes with a face, the emoji. And they geared it to send the worst people to your kid.”

Both hosts want social media treated the way society now treats smoking

Jake said the cultural shift needs to start at home, comparing the social media crisis to smoking.

“I hope the parents approach this the same way that they would smoking,” Jake said. “It’s obviously possible that kids could still find their way to a cigarette. And what I’m hoping is that parents go like, ‘Hey, you know what? Let’s explain to the kids why this is so bad.’ So that it becomes like smoking really has — persona non grata.”

“Australia is banning any social media accounts under 16,” Spike responded. “France, I think, is doing it, but there’s pushback from the courts. They’re challenging its legality to ban 16-year-olds and under from having social media accounts. If Meta’s not going to change the way they do business, just how much of it they release to the public.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to “The Jake and Spike Show” weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio 97.3