Surgeon General warns that social media can be harmful to children and adolescents
The country’s top health official issued an extraordinary public warning on Tuesday about the risks social media poses to young people, urging an effort to fully understand the potential “damage to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents”.
In a 19-page advice, the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy, notes that the effects of social media on adolescent mental health have not been fully understood and that social media may be helpful to some users. Nevertheless, he wrote, “There is ample evidence that social media may also pose a major risk to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”
The report included practical recommendations to help families manage children’s use of social media. It advised families to keep meals and in-person gatherings free from devices to build social bonds and promote conversation. It suggested creating a “family media plan” to set expectations for social media use, including boundaries around content and keeping personal information private.
Dr. Murthy also called on technology companies to enforce minimum ages and create child default settings with high safety and privacy standards. And he urged the government to create age-appropriate health and safety standards for technology platforms.
Adolescents “are not just smaller adults,” Dr Murthy said in an interview Monday. “They’re at a different stage of development, and they’re at a critical stage of brain development.”
The report, which brought the long-simmering concerns surrounding social media into the national conversation, came as state and federal lawmakers, many of them raised in a time when social media was barely or non-existent, wrestled with how to set boundaries. to its use.
The governor of Montana recently signed a bill banning TikTok from operating in the state, prompting the Chinese app to file a lawsuit and young TikTok users complaining about what was called a “kick in the face.” In March, Utah became the first state to ban social media services from allowing users under the age of 18 to access accounts without the express consent of a parent or guardian. That law could drastically limit young people’s access to apps such as Instagram and Facebook.
Research results of Pew research found that up to 95 percent of teens reported using at least one social media platform, with more than a third saying they used social media “almost constantly.” As social media use has increased, so have adolescent self-reports and clinical diagnoses of anxiety and depression, along with emergency room visits for self-harm and suicidal thoughts.
The report could spur further research to understand whether these two trends are related. It joins a growing number of calls to action around adolescents and social media. Earlier this month, the American Psychological Association released its first-ever social media guidelines, recommending that parents keep a close eye on teen use and that tech companies rethink features like endless scrolling and the “Like” button.
In recent years, much research has been conducted into the possible link between social media use and rising levels of anxiety among adolescents. But the results were consistent only in their nuance and complexity.
A analysis published last yearexamining research from 2019 to 2021 on social media use and mental health found that “most reviews interpreted the associations between social media use and mental health as ‘weak’ or ‘inconsistent’, while a few found the same associations qualified as ‘substantial’ and ‘harmful’.”
At its clearest, the data indicates that social media can have both a positive and a negative impact on young people’s well-being, and that heavy use of social media – and screen time in general – appears to be displacing activities such as sleep and exercise. considered essential for brain development.
. On the positive side, social media can help many young people by providing a forum for them to connect with others, find community and express themselves.
At the same time, the Surgeon General’s opinion noted that social media platforms are brimming with “extreme, inappropriate and harmful content,” including content that can “normalize” self-harm, eating disorders and other self-destructive behaviors. Cyberbullying is rife.
In addition, social media spaces can be especially fraught for young people, the advisory added: “In early adolescence, when identities and a sense of self are forming, brain development is particularly sensitive to social pressures, peer opinions and comparisons with peers. peers.”
The advisory noted that tech companies have a vested interest in keeping users online and that they use tactics that lure people into addictive behaviors. “Social media platforms are often designed to maximize user engagement, which has the potential to encourage overuse and behavioral disruption.”
Our children have become unwitting participants in a decades-long experiment.
Increasingly, research shows that some young people are more susceptible to the harms and different types of content than others.
In the opinion, Dr. Murthy an “urgent need” for clarity on several research fronts. These include the types of social media content that cause harm; whether certain neurological pathways, such as those related to reward and addiction, are affected; and what strategies can be used to protect the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.
The advisory did not provide advice on what healthy social media use might look like, nor did it condemn the use of social media by all young people. Rather, it concluded: “We don’t yet have enough evidence to determine whether social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents.”
In an interview on Monday, Dr Murthy acknowledged that the lack of clarity was a heavy burden for individuals and families.
“That’s a lot to ask of parents, to take a new technology that is evolving rapidly and that is fundamentally changing the way kids see themselves,” said Dr. Murthy. “So we need to do what we’re doing in other areas where we have product safety issues, which is to set safety standards that parents can rely on, that are actually enforced.”