The U.S. Surgeon General called for tobacco-style warning labels on social media apps, citing their use as a risk factor for the mental health crisis among young people, in an op-ed published Monday.
“The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency — and social media has emerged as an important contributor,” Vice Admiral Vivek H. Murthy wrote in his guest essay for The New York Times. “[…] It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.”
Citing studies shared via a 2020 report “Smoking Cessation: A Report of the Surgeon General”, Dr. Murthy wrote that tobacco-style “warning labels can increase awareness and change behavior.”
Murthy also referenced a Brookings Institution survey of social media use among young Latinos and their parents’ concerns. Some 76% of the respondents—reacting to a warning from Murthy linking violence, bullying, and sexual content on social media with childhood and teenage depression—expressed willingness to limit or monitor their children’s social media use, the institute’s Feb. 8 report on the survey’s findings revealed.
In May 2023, I outlined recommendations to make social media safer for kids. Yet parents and children are still waiting for change. In my @nytimes op-ed, I issue a renewed call for legislators to take action and also call for a Surgeon General’s warning label on social media. 1/2
— Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General (@Surgeon_General) June 17, 2024
Social media also drives adolescent body dysmorphia in nearly half of adolescents, Murthy wrote, citing an Aug. 2022 survey conducted by the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts. “[P]articipants did think social media made some things worse, including grades in school (31.3%) and body image (46%),” a report on the survey showed.
A surgeon general’s warning label on social media would “regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe,” Murthy wrote, adding that parents often felt “helpless and alone” against the toxicity and dangers occasioned by social media. He shared a piece of anecdotal evidence regarding a Coloradan mom whose daughter killed herself in the wake of cyberbullying, despite the mom’s diligent daily monitoring.
“To be clear, a warning label would not, on its own, make social media safe for young people,” Murthy wrote.
He, therefore, recommended congressional action via a bill, while appreciating the “strong bipartisan support” for safety measures he recommended in his 2023 advisory “Social Media and Youth Mental Health”. (RELATED: ‘Social Media-Induced Loneliness Posing Risk As Deadly As Frequent Smoking, Surgeon General Says)
Congress successfully passed laws that drove down road fatalities about a century ago, and the Federal Aviation Administration grounded 170 airplanes Jan. 6 following a mid-air Boeing plug door blowout. A fatal bacterial disease outbreak February triggered a massive Food and Drug Administration recall of cheese, Murthy recalled.
“Why is it that we have failed to respond to the harms of social media when they are no less urgent or widespread than those posed by unsafe cars, planes or food?” he queried.
“[Legislative] measures should prevent platforms from collecting sensitive data from children and should restrict the use of features like push notifications, autoplay and infinite scroll, which prey on developing brains and contribute to excessive use,” he added.
Social media companies should allow independent safety audits, parents and schools should create and ensure phone-free zones and learning experiences, and public health authorities should call for healthy digital environments, he wrote.
Parents “should wait until after middle school to allow their kids access to social media,” he wrote, adding that “[t]he moral test of any society is how well it protects its children.”
Earlier in June, French President Emmanuel Macron backed a commissioned expert proposal to ban smartphone use for children under 11 years old and social media use for under-15s.
