Anyone buying cigarettes will see a stern warning on the packaging: “Smoking can cause cancer, heart disease, emphysema and complicate pregnancy.”
Why not do something similar to social media, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy suggested last week, after dozens of studies suggest that social media platforms are linked to poor mental health among young people.
That's a good idea. Congress should heed Murthy's call and pass mandatory labeling legislation. Such a move could spark a wave of needed reforms, like enforcing age limits for social media and banning smartphones in schools.
As Mursi wrote in his advisory last year, “indicators abound” that social media is harming children and young people, but a recent Gallup poll found that teenagers are spending nearly five hours a day on these apps.
Among the young people who used social media the most, 41% rated their overall mental health as bad or very bad, compared with 23% of the least frequent users. Ten percent of heavy social media users reported having suicidal thoughts or self-harming in the past 12 months, compared with 5% of low social media users. Other studies have linked heavy social media use to poor sleep, online harassment, low self-esteem, and poor body image, with girls consistently reporting greater negative effects than boys.
Follow this author Leana S. Wen's opinion
Jean M. Twenge, a professor of psychology and author of two books on social media and adolescents, explained to me that parents may not realize how insidious and harmful social media can be.
“There's still this prevalent mindset that, oh, this is how kids communicate now, or that it's just video and therefore harmless,” she says. Many parents don't use these platforms themselves and don't realize how addictive they can be. After all, companies are designing algorithms to keep kids using them for as long as possible.
The Surgeon General's warning may serve as a wake-up call for parents and guardians. It is similar to warning labels on tobacco and alcohol, which have been proven to increase health literacy and reduce consumption. In fact, the World Health Organization has said that health warnings on tobacco product packaging are “critical” to an effective tobacco control strategy.
Warning labels are important for another reason: They could spur long-awaited regulatory efforts to limit social media use among young people.
First, platforms must verify the age of users and prevent young children from accessing inappropriate content. Technology companies claim that they don't allow children under the age of 13 to use their platforms, but this is a willful disregard for reality. A 2022 survey by nonprofit consumer education group Common Sense Media reported that 38% of children between the ages of 8 and 12 use social media.
There are already bipartisan efforts in Congress to enforce a minimum age and require parental consent for those under 18. Twenge and other advocates want to go further and raise the age requirement to 16. The case for such a change has been strengthened by a rebuke from the nation's top doctor over social media use.
Murthy's warning could also help efforts to ban smartphones in schools. There's no reason kids should have cell phones in class, but there are plenty of compelling reasons why they shouldn't: Smartphones are distracting in class, teachers have a hard time keeping kids' attention, and kids would surely do better interacting with each other during lunch and recess than glued to their phones watching TikTok videos.
Lawmakers in Florida and Indiana have successfully banned cellphone use in the classroom, and California's governor recently announced his intention to follow suit. Other states should do the same, armed with a compelling case that doing so improves not just students' learning but their mental health as well.
Concerned parents don't need to wait for a change in the law. As Twenge argues, the most important rule is to keep phones out of the bedroom at night. As with smartphone use at school, there's no benefit to a child accessing social media in the middle of the night. But there is real harm, at the very least, disruption to sleep. Parents can use available parental controls to disable apps after certain hours, or, better yet, physically remove the phone before bedtime.
As expected, Murthy's proposal has sparked backlash. Some have questioned the effectiveness of warning labels (despite evidence that they work in other situations). Others have asked why regulators should target social media when there are other things that can negatively affect kids, like TV. But Twenge's research shows that social media has the greatest negative impact on teen mental health, 10 times more than other types of screen time.
Murthy is using the strongest tools available to address this crisis, and so should everyone else, from lawmakers to parents.
