A Peruvian Thesis That Anticipated Meta’s Addiction Lawsuits

In 2013, in the northern Peruvian city of Piura, a young psychology student named Bryan Luzuriaga conducted a study that would later prove remarkably prescient. His thesis, “Effects of a Cognitive Behavioral Program to Improve Self-Control in Students Predisposed to Facebook Addiction”, explored how adolescents were developing compulsive behaviors around social media use. At the time, Facebook was rapidly expanding worldwide, but few outside academic circles were considering its potential psychological harms.

 

Piura is a regional capital in northern Peru, far from Silicon Valley. Yet it was here that Luzuriaga observed how teenagers were spending excessive hours online, struggling with self-esteem, and losing social skills. His research applied a cognitive-behavioral program to 16 students aged 14–16, measuring their predisposition to Facebook addiction using a standardized scale. The results showed that structured interventions could reduce compulsive use and strengthen self-control.

 

Globally, Facebook had surpassed one billion users by 2012. The platform’s design encouraged constant engagement, and adolescents were particularly vulnerable. Luzuriaga’s thesis connected these patterns to risks of depression, anxiety, and diminished interpersonal skills—issues that would later dominate international debates.

 

Academic Findings

• Methodology: Experimental design with control and treatment groups.
• Tools: Predisposition to Facebook Addiction Scale (PAF), statistical validation using SPSS and Student’s T-test.
• Results: The experimental group showed significant improvement in self-control compared to the control group.
• Implications: Cognitive-behavioral strategies could mitigate social media addiction, framing it as a clinical and educational issue rather than just a lifestyle choice.

 

From Piura to U.S. Courtrooms

More than a decade later, in 2025–2026, U.S. courts fined Meta (Facebook’s parent company) hundreds of millions of dollars for deliberately designing addictive platforms that harmed minors. The same harms Luzuriaga documented—compulsion, low self-esteem, social withdrawal—were recognized as corporate responsibility. What began as a local academic concern in Piura became a global legal and ethical crisis.

 

For an international audience unfamiliar with Piura, this story illustrates how insights from a regional university in Peru anticipated a worldwide reckoning. It underscores that:

• Academic research in Latin America can foresee global challenges.
• Social media addiction is not confined to wealthy nations; it is a universal issue.
• Corporate accountability for digital harms has roots in warnings issued long before lawsuits.

 

Bryan Luzuriaga’s 2013 thesis was more than a student project. It was an early alarm bell about the dangers of social media addiction. Today, as Meta faces legal consequences in the United States, his work reminds us that solutions often emerge from unexpected places. Piura’s voice from the past could have saved Meta millions—and, more importantly, could have protected countless adolescents worldwide.