US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy announced Monday that he would push for labelling to warn parents that use of social media platforms could harm adolescents’ mental health.
Warning labels, like those on tobacco and alcohol products, are among the most powerful tools available to the country’s chief health official, but Dr. Mursi cannot unilaterally mandate them; the measure would need to be approved by parliament.
Dr Murthy said he was “fairly optimistic” that lawmakers would introduce legislation to require warning labels, and predicted we’ll see them regularly pop up on people’s screens when they use social media sites.
The push for warning labels would set up a battle between the tech industry and the Biden administration, which is suing several states over social media laws.
Dr Murthy said the industry was “unsurprisingly” not happy about warning labels, but was deeply frustrated by the platforms’ unwillingness to share data on health effects or allow independent safety audits.
“I don’t think we can just rely on the hope that the platforms will solve this problem on their own,” he said. “They’ve had 20 years.”
The surgeon general’s call to action was backed by two senators, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who authored the Kids Online Safety Act, which would require platforms to take various steps to protect minors on social media.
“We are pleased that the nation’s top doctor, the Surgeon General, continues to focus attention on the harmful effects social media has on children,” the senators said in a joint statement.
In an essay published in the New York Times opinion section on Monday, Dr. Murthy pointed to studies showing that teens who spend more than three hours a day on social media are at significantly higher risk for mental health problems and that 46 percent of teens say social media has made them feel bad about their body.
According to a Gallup survey of more than 1,500 adolescents released last fall, American teenagers spend an average of 4.8 hours a day on social media platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Surgeon General’s proposal, and a YouTube spokesman declined to comment.
Tech companies are likely to argue that the science on the harmful effects of social media is not yet established, and will likely invoke free speech laws to argue that the government cannot force companies to post product warnings, also known as “compulsory speech.”
“Legally speaking, this is no different than the Trump administration’s surgeon general declaring that mainstream media outlets must carry warning labels because they believe the news is fake,” said Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the tech lobbying group Chamber of Progress. “It’s the same kind of abuse of government power to infringe on speech.”
NetChoice, the lobbying group for Meta, which owns YouTube, Snap, Facebook and Instagram, has sued several states over social media laws that infringe on free speech.
The challenge may find a sympathetic ear because the U.S. courts now feature a cohort of justices who have shown less deference to public health regulations than their predecessors, said Claudia E. Haupt, a professor of law and political science at Northeastern University School of Law.
For more than a decade, tobacco companies have successfully fended off demands on First Amendment grounds to print pictures of diseased lungs on their tobacco products, she said.
Warning labels in the past have had a major impact on behavior: In 1965, following a landmark report by the Surgeon General, Congress passed a resolution requiring all tobacco packages distributed in the United States to carry a warning that use of the product “may be dangerous to health.”
Thus began a 50-year decline in smoking: When warning labels first appeared, about 42% of U.S. adults smoked cigarettes daily; by 2021, that percentage had fallen to 11.5%.
Researchers are fiercely debating whether social media is to blame for the mental health crisis among children and adolescents. In his new book, “The Anxious Generation,” social psychologist Jonathan Haidt points to the rise of smartphones in the late 2000s as a tipping point that led to a surge in reports of suicidal behavior and hopelessness.
Other experts say the rise of social media and the decline in happiness have happened simultaneously, but there’s no evidence that one caused the other, pointing instead to factors like economic hardship, social isolation, racism, school shootings and the opioid crisis.
Dr Murthy has previously suggested he sees social media as a health risk: in May 2023, he published an advisory on the subject, warning that “there is ample evidence that social media may cause serious harm to the mental health and wellbeing of children and adolescents.”
But at the time, he noted, the impact of social media was not fully understood. Research shows it poses both risks and benefits, providing a community for young people who might feel alienated.
In an interview last month, Dr Murthy said he had heard many stories of young people who intended to just check their feed only to find hours had passed and they were “stuck on the platform”.
“These platforms are designed to maximize the time we spend on them,” he said. “It’s one thing to do that with adults, but it’s another to do that with children, whose impulse control is still developing and whose brains are at a sensitive stage of development.”
He said in an interview Monday that he had concluded that “the balance of risks and harms does not justify social media use by young people.”
“We are putting young people in a position where they must endure significant harm in order to obtain benefits like connecting with friends,” he said, adding that “we now have enough information to act to make the platforms safer.”
Dr Murthy has steadily raised his voice of urgency about the dangers of social media over the past few years, likening the current situation to a landmark battle in public health history.
“One of the most important lessons I learned in medical school is that in an emergency, you can’t afford to wait for perfect information,” he wrote in an essay on Monday. “Evaluate the available facts, use your best judgment, and act quickly.”
Sapna Maheshwariand Nico Grant Contributed report.