The country’s top health official issued a rare public warning on Tuesday about the risks of social media for young people, urging them to fully understand the potential for “harm to the mental health and well-being of children and young people”.
In a 19-page advisory, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said the impact of social media on the mental health of adolescents is not fully understood and that social media may be beneficial for some users. He pointed out that there is a possibility. Nevertheless, he wrote, “There are ample indications that social media can cause serious harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”
This report includes practical recommendations to help families guide their children’s social media use. The report recommended that families avoid using devices at mealtimes and in-person gatherings to build social bonds and encourage conversation. They suggested creating a “family media plan” to set expectations for social media use, such as content boundaries and maintaining the privacy of personal information.
Dr. Murthy also called on technology companies to enforce minimum age restrictions and create child-friendly default settings with high safety and privacy standards. He called on governments to develop age-appropriate health and safety standards for technology platforms.
Dr. Murthy said in an interview Monday that adolescents are “not just little adults.” “They’re at different stages of development, and they’re at a critical stage in brain development.”
The report effectively elevates long-simmering concerns about social media into the national conversation, with many state and federal lawmakers speaking at a time when social media was little or non-existent. The announcement was made at a time when I was thinking about how to solve this problem. Set limits on its use.
Montana’s governor recently signed a bill banning TikTok from operating in the state, prompting the Chinese-owned app to file a lawsuit and leaving young TikTok users lamenting a so-called “kick in the face.” In March, Utah became the first state to ban social media services from allowing users under 18 to have accounts without the explicit consent of a parent or guardian. The law could significantly limit young people’s access to apps such as Instagram and Facebook.
Up to 95 percent of teens report using at least one social media platform, and more than a third use social media “almost always,” according to Pew Research findings. replied. As social media use increases, self-reported and clinical diagnoses of anxiety and depression among young people are increasing, as are emergency department visits for self-harm and suicidal thoughts.
This report may help stimulate further research to understand whether these two trends are related. This adds to the growing calls for action regarding young people and social media. Earlier this month, the American Psychological Association released its first-ever social media guidance, urging parents to closely monitor their teens’ usage and tech companies reconsidering features like infinite scrolling and “like” buttons. It was recommended to do so.
In recent years, a large body of research has been published on the potential link between social media use and skyrocketing rates of distress among adolescents. However, the results are consistent only in nuance and complexity.
An analysis published last year examined research on social media use and mental health from 2019 to 2021 and found that “most reviews found the association between social media use and mental health to be ‘weak’ or ‘consistent.’ However, a small number of reviews gave the same rating.” The association is considered “substantial” and “adverse”. ”
Most clearly, the data shows that social media can have both positive and negative impacts on young people’s well-being, and that heavy social media use, and screen time in general, can have negative impacts on young people’s well-being, such as sleep and exercise. It shows that it seems to replace the activity. It is thought to be essential for brain development.
On the positive side, social media can help many young people by providing a forum to connect with others, find community, and express themselves.
At the same time, social media platforms are flooded with “extreme, inappropriate and harmful content,” including content that “can normalize” self-harm, eating disorders, and other self-destructive behaviors. The Surgeon General’s recommendations said. Cyberbullying is rampant.
Furthermore, social media spaces can be dangerous, especially for young people, the advisory added, noting that “brain development is especially sensitive to social pressure, peer opinions, and peer interactions in early adolescence, when identity and self-esteem are formed. “They are susceptible to comparisons,” he added.
The advisory noted that technology companies have a vested interest in keeping users online and use tactics that lure people into addiction-like behaviors. “Our children have become unwitting participants in a decades-long experiment,” the advisory states.
A spokesperson for Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, said the recommendations included recommendations that were “reasonable and, to a large extent, already implemented by Meta.” These measures include automatically making accounts private for users under 16 when they join Instagram and restricting users’ accounts. The type of content teens can view on the app.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.
This recommendation did not provide guidance on what healthy social media use looks like, nor did it condemn all young people’s use of social media. Rather, it concluded that “there is not yet sufficient evidence to determine whether social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents.”
The Surgeon General’s position lacks practical power beyond its potential as a bully pulpit, and Dr. Murthy’s recommendations are beyond the force of law and policy. The purpose, his report said, was to call the American public’s attention to an “urgent public health issue” and make recommendations on how to address it.
Similar reports by successive surgeon generals helped shift the national conversation about smoking in the 1960s, brought attention to HIV and AIDS in the 1980s, and led to the rise of obesity as a national epidemic in the early 2000s. he declared. Dr. Murthy declared gun violence an epidemic and blamed what he called “a public health crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection in our country.”
In an interview on Monday, Dr. Murthy acknowledged that the lack of clarity around social media is a huge burden on users and families.
“Embracing new technologies that are rapidly evolving and fundamentally changing children’s sense of self makes a lot of demands on parents,” Dr Murthy said. “So we have to do what we do in other areas where product safety is an issue: set safety standards that parents can trust and that are actually enforced.” It’s what you do.”
Remy Tumin Contributed to the report.