That's because politics became injected into social media/internet. The problem isn't social media per se, it's politics, news, media, etc that has overrun social media in the past 15 years.

Before Obama, the internet and social media was place for young people to goof off. Then obama used youtube/etc to reach young people and then the lgbt/news/media/leftists went crazy on social media paving the way for Trump - which strangely became a problem. Before Trump arrived, politicians/lgbt/news/media/leftists destroying teens mental health was celebrated on social media/internet.

Of course nobody in the senate or government cares one lick about teens' mental health. They are only interested in better controlling social media to destroy teens' mental health for their own agenda.

I've advocated for social media to ban all politics and news. Lets see how that affects people's mental health. Or better yet, remove all politics and news from their recommendations or frontpage. Instead, social media/tech run "get out the vote" campaigns, lift "authoritative" voices and inject politics/news into everyone's lives.