Social media needs warning labels, US surgeon general urges

as the effects of all that swiping and scrolling come into Focus Public Health officials are increasingly worried about the impact of social media on the developing brains of children and teens the platforms are often designed to maximize how much time our kids are spending on them the US Surgeon General now believes platforms like Tik Tok Snapchat and Instagram are so addictive and potentially harmful they should carry a warning similar to cigarettes stating social media is aoci ated with significant mental health harms for adolescents a warning label would help parents to understand these risks many parents don’t know that those risks exist there is in fact good reason to worry we’ve seen a sharp decrease in terms of children’s mental health over the last 15 years which is kind of was just coinciding with screen use Canadian researcher Emma dardan has used brain Imaging studies to map out the impact of social media use on teens we’re also seeing strong associations in terms of their mental health in terms of anxiety and depression and even higher rates of aggression in teens causing harms The Addictive features States like Florida have passed laws Banning Social media for children under 14 requiring parental permission for older teens late last year 33 States sued meta parent company of Facebook and Instagram accusing them of targeting kids we know that the company was well aware of the negative effect well time and again the industry has insisted it’s doing enough we’ve built more than 30 different tools resources and features that parents can set time limits for their teens using our apps warning labels are seen as a direct and potentially more effective appeal to parents it would take an act of Congress to make them mandatory decades ago warning labels worked to dramatically cut cigarette use in the digital era no one knows if they would help curb an addiction that may be just as harmful Jackson prco Global News Washington

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy is calling for tobacco-style warning labels on social media platforms because they have a caused a mental health crisis among young people.

“These harms are not a failure of willpower and parenting,” writes Dr. Murthy, in an op-ed in the New York Times, “they are the consequence of unleashing powerful technology without adequate safety measures, transparency or accountability.”

Jackson Proskow explains the evidence and what needs to change.

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