Adolescence, a show dramatizing the effects of social media on a young boy, has been a huge — and controversial — hit since its release in March 2025. Stories about youth and social media dominated even before the Netflix show’s success, but now, an audience survey is showing strong demand for fresh angles, such as whistleblowers and people standing up to Big Tech.

Entertainment and news are frequently discussing the harms of social media — but rarely do they tie these harms to business practices by tech companies. Instead, as a landmark new study reveals, news and entertainment portray the harms of social media largely on personal responsibility, with relatively little attention paid to the role of tech giants, addictive algorithms or the sector’s harmful business models.

The report, “Off the Hook: Entertainment and News Coverage Rarely Blame Tech Corporations for Social Media Harms,” released last week by the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center and supported by Luminate, spans three major Western cultural markets — the U.S., U.K., and France — and combines audience surveys with thematic analysis of news and scripted entertainment.

Based on a comprehensive scan of popular tech-related keywords, the findings shine a light on a major gap in public discourse: While audiences engage with stories about the dangers of social media, they rarely see those harms linked to the structural decisions made by technology corporations, in the same way that other sectors — such as the fossil fuels industry or Big Tobacco — have effectively been portrayed.

“Audiences see the harms of social media in their own lives, and are eager for stories that go beyond parenting challenges or singular tech villains. They are seeking media coverage that calls out the corporate infrastructure of harm or dramatizes what meaningful accountability could look like,” said Erica Rosenthal, director of research at the Norman Lear Center and lead author of the research.

“Many negative consequences of social media are direct consequences of business choices made by technology corporations. Yet, this new research shows that coverage and representation of who is responsible for social media harms largely lets tech giants off the hook,” said Elise Tillet Dagousset, campaigns and media lead at Luminate. “These latest audience survey results show how hungry people are for information that helps them make sense of the world and enables them to demand change.”

Key findings

People see the harms, but not the big picture

While over 80% of audience members report seeing portrayals of social media harms in entertainment and news, analyzes of news and entertainment show that harms to children and youth are prioritized over impacts on other groups and society at large, and the responsibility of corporations in causing and addressing these harms is rarely discussed.

In fiction for example, of 76 TV episodes and films analyzed, only six pointed fingers at tech firms. Most stories framed the issue as a matter of personal weakness or parenting challenges — a far cry from the stories of justice audiences say they want. Forty percent of episodes highlighted the way social media harms teens, and 21% involved child safety issues.

In TV news, key terms used to describe the systemic harms of social media and technology (e.g. “attention economy,” “surveillance capitalism”) had less than 50 combined mentions across all countries’ news channels. Children and youth was the topic most often shown as intersecting with tech, while less than 5% of mentions of social media were connected to broader social issues like democracy, health or elections.

Print news was more likely than its televised counterparts to highlight systemic issues, with more than two-thirds (67%) mentioning key sources of harm, including algorithms (33%), monopoly power (28%), and lobbying tactics (11%).

While the research predates the premiere of Adolescence, it may help explain the popular sentiment underlying its critical success — audiences are drawn to content that dramatizes social media harms. At the same time, stories that consider the corporate drivers of these hams have the potential to further capitalize on this interest.

Fatalistic framing

Mentions of legal avenues for a healthier tech space — like government regulation or antitrust action — received little TV news coverage.

In print news, regulation dominated as the solution put forward to social media harms but only 11% of articles mentioned specific tools (such as the EU’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act) and only one article referred to collective action as a potential solution.

Most fictional stories framed social media harms as inevitable or unsolvable. Just four stories proposed any kind of systemic solution, and only one — from South Park — showed people collectively organizing to change the system.

Centering survivors, not CEOs

While 90% of print articles focused on harms, few put a human face on those issues.

While one-third of stories quoted a company spokesperson, only 5% of articles included a personal story from someone negatively affected by social media.

Of the sources quoted, 70% were men and only 16% were people of color.

Elon Musk and platform X (formerly Twitter) alone accounted for more than a quarter of all keyword mentions in TV news — more even than the term ‘social media’ itself — illustrating the emphasis on CEO personalities over business models, and sidelining those most affected by online harms.

Audiences know there are better stories to tell

More than 80% said they’re interested (or potentially interested) in seeing dramatic stories about social media harms, especially those involving whistleblowers, online abuse, and corporate takedowns.

Viewers showed strong interest in content that takes on Big Tech directly. Younger and more progressive respondents expressed the highest appetite for this kind of narrative shift.

The report calls on journalists, writers, showrunners, and creatives to try to frame social media as a public interest issue with structural roots — and structural solutions.

Recommendations include:

• Show the full spectrum of social media harms:
  Creators and journalists could satisfy audience interest in a wider array of social media impacts — beyond the common focus on young people — and examine its consequences across all demographics, especially marginalized communities and underreported areas such as public health and climate change.

• Spotlight the business models at the root of these issues:
  Audiences respond strongly to depictions of real corporate practices that shape behavior and distort public discourse. There’s an opportunity to expose how engagement-maximizing models fuel disinformation, polarisation, and exploitation — building on the huge success of similar efforts at challenging other harmful industries, such as Erin Brockovitch, Blood Diamond, The Constant Gardener or Thank You for Smoking. One survey respondent proposed a story about “a powerhouse company that manipulates user behavior, controls public narratives, and even exploits personal data to stay ahead of competitors.”

• Avoid the tech CEO personality cult:
  Audiences are particularly interested in first-hand accounts from insiders or whistleblowers. But the media is often drawn into news cycles shaped (and algorithmically promoted by) Big Tech leaders. While compelling, this obscures the deeper structural drivers of harm, or the links between those individuals’ business decisions and the extractive systems they helm.

• News and entertainment can learn from one another:
  Journalists, who are accustomed to highlighting systemic problems, might consider lifting up the personal stories of those most affected. Entertainment creators, who are exceptionally skilled at telling character-driven stories, have an opportunity to show how corporations’ practices constrain and drive individual choices.

• Model collective action, not just individual resilience:
  “Gloom-and-doom” stories can make people feel like complex problems aren’t solvable. Rather than portraying harms as inevitable or insoluble, the emphasis could shift to what communities and institutions can do to challenge and change the system.

The full report is available here.