The U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, announced on Monday, that he would moving forward to push for social media companies to introduce a warning label, advising parents that using these platforms might damage adolescents’ mental health. I mean, as adults, most of us would think this to be an obvious move. This latest move is another volley in the surgeon’s general mission to bring increasing awareness on this issue. His initiative entails the implementation of new practices, among them, the sharing of internal data on the health impact of their products; to allow independent safety audits; and restrict features like push notifications, autoplay and infinite scroll, which he says “prey on developing brains and contribute to excessive use.”
Yet, Chamber of Progress, a tech lobbying firm representing the financial and legal interests of all the major tech giants, obviously oppose this because of course they would. Not getting kids hooked on their products early would squarely against their business model. They even tried to invoke Trump, claiming that a warning label is something Trump would do. Implying that, you know, if the bad orange man did it, then a warning is clearly a bad move. Context and intent in that argument be damned. As it is humorous, if blatantly transparent.
In the US, teenagers spend on average, 51% of teen spend about 4.8 hours on social media as per a Gallup survey canvasing 1500 adolescents in 2023. A number of other studies and surveys have demonstrated a correlation between a teen’s use of social media and mental health issues, like depression and anxiety.
Especially for younger girls with Instagram being the most damaging one. Despite smartphones being a thing by the early 2000’s, data sets in the USA show a 25% increase in mental health disorders starting in 2009, coincidentally the same year the iPhone was released, normalizing on-the-go social media access to the masses. Case in point, the CDC reported in 2017 that emergency-room admissions for self-harm among 10- to 14-year-old girls tripled between 2009 and 2015.
The increase of mental health issues continue to this day, affecting even older demographics as well and albeit this can be attributed so other causes working in tandem —like the decrease of play-based childhood due to helicopter parenting— it is more than fair to claim that social media and the perceptions and echo chambers it pushes on its users is a cause. More so for children who may lack the real world experience to contextualize and minimize the barrage of images and ideas that may reach them, unfiltered.
I would insofar agree that more should be done in this space. Active campaigns to further illustrate the negative impact. Since for sure most understand social media is has side effects, however, it seems the issue is the aware lies in a more concrete understanding of how varied and of how much.
Over a decade ago, Meta, Twitter and others would argue the damage on children, specially long-term was unknown, leveraging the same marketing angle of attack tobacco companies used to sow uncertainty into the mind of the populace. It is no secret in both the world of marketing and geopolitics that asserting a fact is not always needed if you can effectively muddy the waters surrounding it. As it takes less money and effort to do so, plus it is very difficult to prove something correct when you are factually wrong. However, people with preexisting biases will usually fill in the remaining gaps with whatever confirmation bias they already have. ‘Keeners,’ if you will. In fact, you always account for this very effect, always, when preparing any sort of public campaign, or at least the best in the field do.
In fact, the use of social media literally rewires your brain, but do not believe me, believe the word of ex-Facebook Executives:
There is a reason why most tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs were known to keep screens away from their developing children and highly limit their use as they got older in order to not hinder or damage their development. But as far as your kids… well, that’s another matter entirely if their actions or the lack of them are to be taken into account, if so, then they are fair game in their eyes.
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