The surgeon general’s warning on social media draws praise and resistance

The surgeon general’s warning on social media draws praise and resistance – YOU United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wants to place a warning label on social media. “It is time to demand a surgeon general warning label on social media platforms stating that social media has been linked to significant harm to adolescent mental health,” he wrote. in an opinion piece published Monday in the New York Times, calling on Congress to take action to add the warning, which would be in line with warnings against tobacco and alcohol use.

Last year, Murthy published an opinion to help parents navigate children’s social media use. While concluding at the time that “there is not enough evidence that it is safe for our children,” Murthy also acknowledged in an interview with STAT that social media has some benefits, calling for “maximizing the benefits and minimizing the harms.” ”

His call to action on Monday was louder and drew praise from advocates stricter controls on social media, especially for young people. “Yes, this is a consumer product that is unsafe for children and teens,” wrote NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidta strong supporter of limiting phone time, on X.

But for several experts working in this field, the type and extent of harm social media inflicts on children is not as clear as Murthy seems to suggest. According to Michaeline Jensen, a psychologist at the University of South Carolina, Greensboro, there is indeed not enough evidence to conclude that social media is safe – but there is also not enough to conclude the opposite.

“The opinion piece by Dr. Murthy is really just saying that social media is associated with significant damage to adolescent mental health, which feels like a very sweeping statement,” Jensen said, “given that the actual research evidence on this question is far from It’s compelling to support this strong statement.”

Candice Odgers, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, whose research focuses on the impact of social media on young people, said about 90% of studies in her field are correlational. They “simply cannot answer the question on everyone’s mind: ‘Is social media causing mental health problems in our children?’” she wrote in a statement shared with STAT. The National Academies of Sciences agreed, publishing in a 2023 report that “available research linking social media to health shows small effects and weak associations… Contrary to the current cultural narrative that social media is universally harmful to adolescents, the reality is more complicated. ”

Justifying the broader climate of skepticism and fear surrounding social media, there are areas where it has been shown to cause potential harm, Jensen said: cyberbullying, exposure to racism and discrimination, sleep and attention disruptions related to screen time, and social comparison. , especially when it comes to physical appearance, which can worsen eating disorders.

But there is also fairly strong evidence for some benefits, she said. “To the extent that young people use social media for online social interactions, social support or seeking information about health issues, these can be useful experiences – especially for young people who are otherwise isolated or stressed in their offline lives,” Jensen said.

If you ask teens themselves how they feel about social media, you won’t get an ominous picture: A 2023 study from the Pew Research Center found that 32% of teens said social media platforms had a “mostly positive” impact on their lives, and only 9% said it had a negative impact.

Could a warning capture the nuance of this research, Jensen wonders, or just capture the downsides? “I don’t know if they can get a three-paragraph warning from a surgeon general that would understand this nuance,” she said. The advice Murthy published last year was much more specific and easier to support, pointing out the need for warnings about sexual content, privacy protections or auditing by third-party researchers.

“There is certainly plenty of research to suggest that the surgeon general’s warnings about things like alcohol and tobacco did indeed work,” Jensen said. “Those were some of the most effective public health interventions we’ve had.” But the reason they were so effective, she said, is that there was extremely strong evidence to support the warnings. A weaker evidence base for a social media warning could even compromise the power of warning labels in the future.

Some researchers on X to the op-ed agreed, incl Pete Etchells, professor of psychology and science communication at Bath Spa University and author of Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time. He wrote that the warning “sets a dangerous precedent, and is a good reminder that the urgency of ‘doing something now’ makes evidence-based approaches all the more important.”

Teenagers certainly seem to be aware of the risks of social media. In the same Pew poll, when teens were asked what they thought the impact was on their peers, they reported fewer positive and more harmful impacts. “I don’t know if there’s a young person who doesn’t know that people say it’s harmful,” Jensen says.