Juan Gris: Still Life (1922)

"Scrolling holds deeper purposes than escape and addiction."

Before the judge in the landmark Social Media case unfolding in Los Angeles, while I created this Unscrolling Series, released the jury to begin their deliberations, he instructed them that they would not be deciding using Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, a foundational law that generally shields online platforms, websites, and users from liability for content posted by third parties. This law did not apply to these deliberations because the case was not about product liability per se, but platform engineering and design rather than content. Should Meta and YouTube have known their social media services posed a danger to children? Were their designs negligent in this way? These must have been challenging questions because after weeks of prosecution and a week of deliberation, the jury remains out.

In closing arguments, the plaintiff’s attorney harangued the defendants for profiting from users’ attention, comparing their features to a Trojan horse. Lawyers for Meta and YouTube denied that their apps are purposefully harmful for young users. Meta’s defense argued that the plaintiff’s difficult home life left her turning to their platforms as a coping mechanism, a means of escaping from her mental health struggles rather than the cause of them. The context within which this case has played out will doubtless influence how an estimated 1,600 pending cases approach their claims. These involve hundreds of families and school districts also interested in receiving judgments for addictive effects. The result of this case might be a new understanding of product design liability rather than one just focusing solely on content.

It was pure Kismet that this case paralleled my creation of this series, and that the Jury would still be deliberating as I was creating the final installment in this Unscrolling Series. Obviously, the direct result of creating this series will not be me ceasing all scrolling, for as I discovered over the course of writing this series, scrolling has become an integral element of modern life. I could stop scrolling and gain nothing. Unscrolling’s promise only pretends to predict a positive outcome. I have adopted greyscale scrolling, which renders the resulting displays less visually attractive. This has made the habit only slightly less addictive, though the experts agree that a scrolling habit doesn’t quite satisfy the formal definition of addiction since ceasing doesn’t necessarily cause any harm or damaging distress. Scrolling might well be habit-forming, not addictive, and still be the Devil himself to quit.

I think of myself as a more circumspect scroller as a direct result of creating this series. I hope the same for my readers. My naivety with which I began this inquiry, eighty-nine installments ago, has not survived the effort. I seem to have rendered myself incapable of so mindlessly scrolling now that I’ve more deeply considered the practice. With Spring approaching, my attention naturally extends to gardening again. I’m no longer cowering against Winter’s discouraging winds, but out in our yard digging in my dirt again. Decades of dedicated practice have left most beds perfectly friable, with the cheat grass mostly at bay, except, of course, along the long back fence, which borders on a neighbor’s yard, which has always been the source of all the cheatgrass incursions. I have a viable alternative to scrolling ever more inward, so I have reason to stem my unseemly scrolling habit or addiction, whatever it is. It has been a comfort through the cold.

The deliberating jury has sent several questions to the judge related to the plaintiff’s family troubles and how much she actually used Instagram as a child. Experienced court watchers doubtlessly drew some conclusions from these questions. The rest of us will have to wait and see. Me? I’m also considering all I stumbled upon through my quarter-long deliberations. I’ve turned over and over this most piercing question in my mind, yet still can’t quite draw anything resembling a definitive resolution. I still seemingly scroll too much, or I might scroll just the perfect amount for me. I discover plenty when I scroll. It’s not just another Devil’s playground, but synchronicity frolics there, too. More than a few of the stories in this series started with some half-baked inspiration I stumbled upon when scrolling. Social Media’s not merely mindlessness and streaming cat videos. It holds deeper purposes than escape and addiction.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Unscrolling, #PureSchmaltz