Experts say we're facing a public health crisis due to a generation of kids who've spent more than a decade in front of screens staring at content.

The technology industry is accused of designing to be addictive.

With concrete data showing it's harming kids mental health.

Well, New Jersey recently joined 32 other states in a lawsuit against Facebook owner Meta over just that.

But most agree legal action won't solve the problem.

Today, Seton Hall law gathered lawyers, educators and health professionals to figure out what will.

Senior correspondent Joanna Gagis reports.

Teens spend eight and a half hours on screens, and half of teens say that any other constantly online.

It's a reality we can't get away from.

Technology is addicting us.

But experts say it's the worst public health crisis of our time for kids.

A conference today at Seton Hall University looked at how social media companies are intentionally gearing their apps to be addictive using features like Infinite Scroll.

There's just a constant stream of content, and some of it is kind of content that kids really love, and some of it is going to be boring or they're not interested in.

And so what ends up happening is it's actually like a slot machine where you don't know if the next poll is going to be a winner or a loser.

And what we know from psychology is that these kind of intermittent and rewards are really powerful.

And in fact, it gets kids using these platforms more than if every video was something that they like.

The fact that they don't know if it's going to give them that dopamine hit or.

Not, ultimately features like curated algorithms, infinite scrolling, haptic notifications where the phones tap or vibrate.

Quantified popularity through views, likes or follows.

And face enhancing filters are contributing to some of the worst problems we have.

There is a lot of data coming out in the last two or three years which shows the impact on kids mental health from 2002 ten, when social media and phones became popular.

We basically see a huge increase in deteriorating mental health.

For example, depression rates for teens more than doubled.

Higher rates of suicide, self-harm, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances and so many other challenges faced by our children and our teenagers.

Josh Golin from the organization Fair Play says the government missed the window to regulate how social media sites engage with their users.

But a shift now needs to happen in the social norms we've created around them.

And we need to reverse these social norms.

That tells kids that being popular, that being online all the time is the most important thing.

And that's really hard to do when when you're dealing with a technology which is both so pervasive and addictive.

But it needs to go further than that, says Seton Hall's Gaia Bernstein.

She and other speakers looked at ways to hold these companies accountable that are intentionally addicting their child aged users.

Who have no choice but to dismantle this business model, which is used by the tech industry, which basically means that they need to keep us online for as long as possible so they can collect our data and then they need to keep us there again for as long as possible so they can target ads of this at us.

And minors are basically a huge part of this revenue model.

Attorney General Plotkin likens their actions now to those taken by several attorneys general in the late nineties who sued the tobacco industry for targeting kids.

He's led a coalition of 41 bipartisan attorneys general across the country in a lawsuit against Metuh, citing evidence that the company knew it was addicting kids even while denying it.

And his office is now turning to Tik.

Tok, the same state coalition that brought the matter complaint is actively investigating Tik Tok for similar conduct.

That investigation remains ongoing and rest assured, there's a whole lot of activity that is not public.

But these experts agree there is no one magic court case or new law that will fix the problem.

It'll take a multitude of actions, including getting phones out of kid's hands, both in school and at home.

In Newark, I'm Joanna Gagis NJ Spotlight News.