• by Steven Rosenbaum , Featured Contributor, March 17, 2025

They packed the room, standing room only. A sold-out crowd gathered at the feature session at SXSW, drawn by a voice that refuses to be ignored. Emma Lembke took the stage not just as an activist, not just as a senior at Washington University in St. Louis, but as the conscience of a generation suffocating under the weight of an exploitative digital world.

Her message was clear: "Social media isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed: to capture, to addict, to manipulate, and to profit off the psychological vulnerabilities of its users. And for Gen Z, that design has resulted in a mental health catastrophe."

Lembke didn’t just speak about her own experience. She spoke for others: "The millions who have felt their self-worth measured in likes and comments. The millions who have been preyed upon by algorithms pushing eating disorders, self-harm content, and toxic beauty standards. The millions who have felt their attention spans shredded, their relationships eroded, their sense of self hijacked by the infinite scroll."

Big Tech’s Dirty Secrets Are No Longer Secrets

There was no sugarcoating it. The platforms that claim to connect us have instead engineered an ecosystem of harm, and they’ve done it knowingly. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed internal research proving Instagram was making body image issues worse for one in three girls. Yet, instead of sounding the alarm, the company buried the evidence and continued the harm.

And it’s not just mental health. Lembke laid out the Big 5: the five interconnected crises that define the social media crisis of our time. These are not isolated issues. They fuel each other, creating a perfect storm of destruction:

Teen mental health and cyberbullying: A culture of constant comparison, algorithm-driven exposure to harmful content, and cyberbullying have sent teen depression and anxiety rates skyrocketing, particularly among young girls.

Misinformation and disinformation: Lies travel faster than truth in a system that rewards outrage and sensationalism, warping public discourse and destabilizing democracy itself.

Addiction and fractured attention spans: Platforms are designed to hook users, exploiting psychological vulnerabilities to keep them scrolling endlessly -- at the cost of focus, creativity, and deep thinking.

Privacy erosion and data exploitation: Every tap, pause, and linger feeds a massive surveillance economy that monetizes personal data, shaping thoughts, behaviors, and even elections without user consent.

Social and political polarization: Instead of fostering understanding, social media isolates users in algorithmic echo chambers, fueling division, distrust, and extremism across the globe.

This isn’t just a Gen Z issue. It’s a labor issue, a democracy issue, a human rights issue. And yet, the architects of this destruction -- Big Tech billionaires -- continue to profit while the most vulnerable pay the price.

The Fight for a Sustainable Digital Future

Lembke didn’t just diagnose the problem. She laid out the blueprint for a new digital future -- one that puts people over profit, ethics over engagement, and safety over surveillance capitalism.

At SXSW, she unveiled Activate Media, a radical co-design incubator where Gen Z leaders will work directly with developers, policymakers, and mental health experts to build alternative social media platforms -- platforms that don’t thrive on addiction, and instead prioritize well-being. These platforms will give users control over their own digital experiences, rather than exploiting them.

This isn’t just talk. The Sustainable Media Center is launching an initiative to fund and develop transformative social media platforms built from the ground up with ethical design principles. Its goal? To fund 25 promising MVPs and launch three to five fully functional platforms that don’t need to mine human suffering to succeed.

The Business Model of Big Tech Is a Choice—And It Can Be Replaced

Big Tech defenders claim the current model is inevitable -- that advertising-driven surveillance and engagement addiction are the only ways to make these platforms financially viable. Lembke calls bullshit.

She challenged brands and advertisers directly: "Stop funding harm. If advertising dollars power the algorithms that push toxic content, then those same dollars can be used to fund ethical, sustainable alternatives. It’s not a question of whether tech can be different. It’s a question of whether we’re willing to demand that it be different."

The Tobacco Moment of Gen Z’s Generation

For Gen X, it was Big Tobacco. For millennials, it was the financial crash. For Gen Z, this is the fight -- the moment where an entire generation is waking up to the fact that they’ve been used as test subjects in an unregulated social experiment. And they’re refusing to accept it.

Lembke likened the shift that needs to happen to past fights against unchecked corporate exploitation: "Just as tobacco companies were forced to confront the harms they inflicted on the public, so too must Big Tech be held accountable. The difference? We don’t have 20 years to wait for accountability."

Will We Rise to Meet This Moment?

Lembke ended with a challenge: "To parents: Will you fight for your children’s right to grow up without being targeted by manipulative algorithms? To teachers: Will you demand platforms that support education rather than erode attention spans? To policymakers: Will you pass the legislation necessary to protect users instead of catering to Silicon Valley’s lobbying machine? To brands: Will you withdraw your ad dollars from exploitative platforms and invest in ethical alternatives? To Gen Z: Will you build the future you want rather than resigning yourselves to the one you were given?"

The answer was clear: A new generation is taking the reins. They refuse to accept that the internet must be a predatory space. They refuse to allow the attention economy to define their lives. They refuse to be digital lab rats in an experiment gone horribly wrong.

The future isn’t something we wait for. It’s something we build. And at SXSW, Emma Lembke made it clear: Gen Z is ready to build it.

You can view the SXSW talk here.