Surgeon General Calls for Cigarette-Style Warnings on Social Media Platforms to Protect Kids
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy says the risks posed by social media to young people’s mental health are so severe that platforms should be required to carry warnings labels like those on alcohol and tobacco products.
“The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency—and social media has emerged as an important contributor,” Dr. Murthy wrote in a New York Times op-ed Monday, citing studies linking adolescent social media use with increased risk of mental health issues. “It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents,” he added.
New York City Declares War on the Public Health Scourge of… Social Media
Such labels will require congressional action and cannot be unilaterally imposed by the surgeon general. But Murthy pleaded with lawmakers to make them a reality in order to “regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe.”
The call for labels comes after Murthy released an advisory last year about the potential harms social media can pose to children’s well-being. “We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis—one that we must urgently address,” Murthy said in a statement at the time.
In the new op-ed, Murthy pointed to the success that warning labels have had in raising awareness about the health risks of tobacco. Congress voted in 1965 to require all cigarette packaging to carry a warning reading: “Caution: Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health,” after a groundbreaking surgeon general report. About 42 percent of adult Americans smoked at that time, a figure that had fallen to 11.5 percent as of 2021.
Murthy said a similar label on social media platforms “would not, on its own, make social media safe for young people,” and that legislation is still required to protect them online from abuse, harassment, and exploitation, while also preventing their exposure to “extreme violence” and “sexual content” in their feeds.
“The measures should prevent platforms from collecting sensitive data from children and should restrict the use of features like push notifications, autoplay and infinite scroll, which prey on developing brains and contribute to excessive use,” Murthy wrote.
He also invoked previous legislative efforts to protect public health, citing safety features that were mandated in cars—like seatbelts and airbags—in the last century to reduce the number of crash deaths. Murthy also pointed to more recent examples, including the FAA grounding Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after a door plug blew out of one mid-flight in January.
“Why is it that we have failed to respond to the harms of social media when they are no less urgent or widespread than those posed by unsafe cars, planes or food?” Murthy asked. “These harms are not a failure of willpower and parenting; they are the consequence of unleashing powerful technology without adequate safety measures, transparency or accountability.”
“The moral test of any society is how well it protects its children,” Murthy wrote, adding: “We have the expertise, resources and tools to make social media safe for our kids.” “Now is the time to summon the will to act,” Murthy wrote. “Our children’s well-being is at stake.”
Aside from warning labels and legislation, Murthy said schools should also ensure that classroom learning and social time are “phone-free experiences,” whole parents should similarly “create phone-free zones” around bedtime, meals, and social gatherings to protect kids’ sleep and “real-world connections.”
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