'An unfair fight': Surgeon general says parents need help with kids' social media use

In 1964, Surgeon General Luther Terry issued an advisory that tobacco use is hazardous to your health. Terry's pronouncement led Congress to institute the warning labels that are on cigarette packages to this day. It also helped lead to a dramatic decrease in cigarette use, saving millions of lives.

In that same spirit, current Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory last year about the effect that social media has on youth mental health. This week, he urged Congress to require that digital warnings be attached to social media platforms. 

I spoke with Dr. Murthy this week on Doctor Radio on SiriusXM about his efforts. He said his concerns resonate with his own experience and worries as a parent.

“My kids are of an age, 6 and 7, where they are not on social media yet, but when my daughter was in preschool she came home one day and asked my wife and me about posting a picture on social media," Murthy said. "Because her classmates had been talking about it. This is in preschool. So kids are getting exposed to this. We have 40% of kids ages 8 through 12 who are on social media. So this is coming to our kids earlier and earlier."

Social media is designed to keep users on the site

The surgeon general also said he is concerned about the pressure that parents face in battling their children's exposure to social media.

“The entire burden of managing this has been placed on the shoulders of parents, and that is simply not fair," Murthy said. "And they are pitted against the best product engineers in the world who are using the most cutting-edge brain science to ultimately maximize the amount of time people are spending on these social media platforms. So that is the definition of an unfair fight.”

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Murthy told me that his motivation to stand up against the growing risks of social media and its ties to America’s mental health crisis came from talking to parents and their kids across the country.

“They kept saying, is this safe for my kids to use?" he said. "And it was ultimately those conversations that made me say, you know what, we know that there’s growing evidence of an association between social media use and harm."

I asked the surgeon general what a digital warning label would look like. He said that different sizes and fonts and graphics will have to be tested to see what works best, but that “the message that a warning label should convey is that we now have evidence that shows us that social media use may be associated with mental health harm for adolescents."

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Status quo of social media isn't acceptable

When it comes to public safety, Murthy said that we can’t just accept the status quo, any more than we have with cigarettes, alcohol or car accidents.

Yet, it will be a prodigious fight against a powerful adversary.

“These platforms are highly sophisticated, they’ve been around and have evolved over a number of years now, but when what’s at stake is nothing less than the mental health and well-being of our kids, and we owe it to them as a society to do everything we can." Murthy said. "I think of what I would do as a parent if my child was in danger, and I would do what most parents would do, which is pull out every single stop to make sure that they were safe.

"Well, I’m telling you right now that millions of children in our country are experiencing this huge mental health crisis. Their well-being and in some cases their lives are in danger. Are we willing as a country to pull out the stops, to do everything we need to do, to protect them, to safeguard them?"

Dr. Marc Siegel is a professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at New York University's Langone Health. His latest book is "COVID: the Politics of Fear and the Power of Science." Follow him on Twitter: @DrMarcSiegel