INDIANA – Social media can present a real risk to the mental health of children and teenagers because of the ways their brains are affected by the amount of time they spend using it, the U.S. surgeon general warns in a new advisory released Tuesday.
In a 19-page advisory, the United States Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, noted that the effects of social media on adolescent mental health were not fully understood and that social media can be beneficial to some users. Nonetheless, he wrote, “There are ample indicators that social media can also have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”
According to the advisory, 95% of teenagers ages 13-17 say they use a social media app and more than a third say they use it “almost constantly.” The Social Media and Youth Mental Health advisory says social media can perpetuate “body dissatisfaction, disordered eating behaviors, social comparison, and low self-esteem, especially among adolescent girls.”
Nearly 1 in 3 adolescents report using screens until midnight or later, the advisory says. And most are using social media during that time.
Do children and adolescents have adequate safeguards for social media? The data reveal that there isn’t enough evidence yet to make a clear determination. “What we need to know is not only the full extent of the impact,” said Murthy, “but which kids are most impacted in terms of benefits and harms.”
He called on tech companies, researchers, families, and policymakers to do more to understand the vulnerabilities facing young people and figure out standards to help them stay safe and healthy.
“I call for specific action from technology companies, from policymakers, because we need safety standards for social media,” Murthy said.
The report included practical recommendations to help families guide children’s social media use. It recommended that families keep mealtimes and in-person gatherings free of devices to help 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 tech companies to enforce minimum age limits and to create default settings for children with high safety and privacy standards. And he urged the government to create age-appropriate health and safety standards for technology platforms.
Social media and depression among children
Survey results from Pew Research have found that up to 95 percent of teens reported using at least one social media platform, while more than one-third said they used social media “almost constantly.” As social media use has risen, so have self-reports and clinical diagnoses among adolescents of anxiety and depression, along with emergency room visits for self-harm and suicidal ideation.
Most kids reported social media made them feel worse about themselves or worse about their friendships, but they can’t get off it.
Nearly half of adolescents are saying that social media makes them feel worse about their body image.
The surgeon general’s advisory noted, that social media platforms brim with “extreme, inappropriate and harmful content,” including content that “can normalize” self-harm, eating disorders, and other self-destructive behavior. Cyberbullying is rampant.
Moreover, social media spaces can be fraught for young people especially, the advisory added: “In early adolescence, when identities and sense of self-worth are forming, brain development is especially susceptible to social pressures, peer opinions and peer comparison.”
The advisory noted that technology companies have a vested interest in keeping users online and that they use tactics that entice people to engage in addictive-like behaviors. “Our children have become unknowing participants in a decades-long experiment,” the advisory states.
A spokesperson for Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, said that the advisory included recommendations that “are reasonable and, in large part, Meta has already implemented.” Those measures include automatically making the accounts of people under 16 private when they join Instagram and limiting the types of content teens can see on the app. TikTok did not immediately respond.
The advisory did not provide guidance on what a healthy use of social media might look like, nor did it condemn social media use for all young people. Rather, it concluded, “We do not yet have enough evidence to determine if social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents.”
The surgeon general’s position lacks any real power beyond its potential as a bully pulpit, and Dr. Murthy’s advisory does not carry the force of law or policy. It was intended, the report said, to call Americans’ attention to “an urgent public health issue” and to make recommendations for how it should be addressed.
Dr. Murthy acknowledged that the lack of clarity around social media was a heavy burden for users and families to bear.
“That’s a lot to ask of parents, to take a new technology that’s rapidly evolving and that fundamentally changes how kids perceive themselves,” Dr. Murthy said. “So we’ve got to do what we do in other areas where we have product safety issues, which is to set in place safety standards that parents can rely on, that are actually enforced.”
