In this chapter we explore the ways in which discourses of addiction are used by various actors to convey particular understandings of social media platforms, systems, and users. We suggest that the term ‘social media addiction’ has emerged as a key ideological battlefield of our era, where the tussle is between those who position addiction as an individual problem, and those who see it as a deliberate and malicious business model built on ‘dark patterns’ of interface design. Users themselves appear caught in between: adopting the term ‘addiction’ when it feels like it fits their experience, while internalising the guilt and shame that tends to come with the term. In this chapter, we argue that there needs to be greater attention paid to the framing of ‘addiction’ in the online space. We need to consider who benefits from framing addiction as an individual pathology, and who benefits from seeing it as a systemic problem. The fact that different parties, from Big Tech to whistleblowers, legislators and popular media, are so invested in this notion of social media ‘addiction’ shows there is something quite significant at stake.