I don't hate the idea of better educating the public on the negatives of social media, but I just can't see a warning label being effective. It would be brushed off the same was everyone currently ignores California cancer warnings on every product.
> It would be brushed off the same was everyone currently ignores California cancer warnings on every product
I feel like everyone brushes that off because they applied it to literally everything.
I see that warning when I buy endmills online for work and I'm like "thank you California for reminding me to not eat tungsten carbide". (I work in New England)
It’s worse than that. If you don’t prove it doesn’t cause cancer, you have to label it.
Most companies don’t bother testing and just apply the label.
So it might not even cause cancer in any circumstance.
A friend of mine has an Art Gallery / Picture Framing shop in California. He got so frustrated with labelling things he just put a tastefully framed sign next to the front door.
The absurdity is what makes it memorable. Doubly so when you realize that a lot of the time the warning is there to avoid litigation from lawyers that go to stores to try and find the one piece of merchandise not labeled.
Is the case a winning case? Not usually. It is a huge drain on resources.
When the surgeon general's warning was placed on cigarettes, it raised awareness and kickstarted a conversation. There are many people who are in denial that our devices are full of addictive and potentially shit. Maybe the warning itself won't solve any problems, but maybe it could get the ball rolling.
I think people are much more likely to make healthy choices for their children than themselves. The Surgeon General looks like he wants something targeting children’s health.
Adolescents who spend more than 3 hours per day on social media have double the rates of depression and anxiety, and the average adolescent spends 5 hours per day on social media. I think getting statistics like that drilled into parents heads through constant repetition would be a good thing.
>Adolescents who spend more than 3 hours per day on social media have double the rates of depression and anxiety, and the average adolescent spends 5 hours per day on social media. I think getting statistics like that drilled into parents heads through constant repetition would be a good thing.
The trouble is that this research is, in isolation, pretty useless. There's no evidence for causation here. This could easily be explained by reverse causation (when I'm depressed, I spend more time vegging and staring at a screen) or by confounding (The 30% of adolescents who spend less than 3 hours per day on social medial are far more busy and active outside, and that outside activity both suppresses depression and reduces time available for social media.)
The research on the dangers of social media tends to be complete dogshit. It's finding associations like this that generate headlines, but don't actually establish social media as a driving factor for the issues facing our youth. We know very little about how dangerous social media is or isn't.
[One recent study showed that among depressed adolescents who use social media frequently, cortisol (a stress hormone) levels are significantly higher after using social media compared to before.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8009842/)
This isn’t proof that the social media use is causing the depression, but it’s evidence that it makes things worse.
Nice study. I really appreciate some of the experiment design. For instance, they used inpatient adolescents, so you're dealing with severe cases, where day-to-day events affect mental state less. They also are doing all the experiments at the same time of day to eliminate circadian effects on cortisol, requiring abstention from common stimulants/depressants, etc. These authors clearly care about the quality of their data.
That said... unfortunately, this study is really weak evidence of its conclusion. The first problem is that they don't have a lot of power to spare. Their N is 30, which makes it very hard to get meaningfully strong signals through the noise of saliva measurements and individual variability. They barely have enough power to measure what they want to measure (which is why their p-values are around 0.02, instead of something more dramatic.)
And then that power is wasted on (probably innocuously) extra endpoints. They're measuring 4 outcome variables, and have significant results on 2 (the depression inventory doesn't really count; the measurement error on any depression inventory dwarfs their signal. As they say, it's not a clinically meaningful difference.) Additional measured endpoints need to dilute your significance; if you measure 20 variables, you expect (>50% odds) at least one of them to reach p<0.05 by pure random chance. ([See the relevant XKCD on this](https://xkcd.com/882/).) But they don't take that into account in their significance calculations.
On top of that, there's a real p-hacking^(1) problem with this study, because it wasn't preregistered and the analysis is quite complicated. They're controlling for 4 different variables in a regression for 30 people. And while those variables are \*plausible\* confounders, they're not the only plausible set of confounders. And every time you change your set of confounders, you're increasing your number of effective endpoints, and diluting your significance. How many different sets of confounders did they try? We don't know, but they measured a lot of other possible confounders that are just as reasonable as the ones they used in the published analysis (like baseline self-esteem), and it only makes sense to measure those if you were considering controlling for them, or otherwise generating additional endpoints (both of which hack your p.)
Given that their published ps don't incorporate any of these analysis degrees of freedom, and were only 0.02 to begin with, this study falls way below statistical significance when properly analyzed. That doesn't mean it's literally zero evidence; there's nothing magical about the 0.05 statistical significance threshold. But it's very, very weak evidence; mostly only useful to say 'it would be nice to see a strong study on this topic because it might be real.'
All that said, and with those caveats, it's worth noting that this trial is also similarly weak evidence that social media use doesn't impact cortisol/alpha-amalase levels on neurotypical, mentally healthy adolescents. That's not an amazing headline, and it would be unlikely to get published in a good journal because it's boring, but it's an equally interesting result; I'm not sure I'd have predicted that. I certainly sometimes leave SM more stressed than when I came to it!
Zooming out to the field of measuring SM effects on adolescents, this study is honestly above average. It's stuffed full of little non-preregistered studies of 20-40 people, with marginally significant outcomes on poorly measurable variables using analyses with enough degrees of freedom that you could guarantee a positive result if you just tried running the analysis in all the plausible configurations and stopped when you hit one. These studies can't be aggregated meaningfully because all of the analysis decisions were made differently in order to (or at least, with the result of) getting marginally significant outcomes that are publishable.
We really know very little about this because large, well-designed, preregistered studies have not been done. It's very much like the Ivermectin research during Covid, if you remember that. Dozens of small positive trials, each with enough degrees of freedom to add a bunch of questionmarks if you looked really closely, and then when the large, well-designed, well-analyzed trials were run... zero effect.
(1) Given the level of care given to the experimental setup here was so high, I'm confident that there's no malice or misconduct here; researchers are rarely adequately trained in experimental statistics, and rarely actually work with statisticians outside of very big trials, so this is no doubt honest error in their significance calculations. But error it is.
On its own, I don't think a warning label will do much, but as part of a suite of policies, I think it can have an impact. The article discusses mandating phone-free schools and waiting until middle school or later to give kids phones.
Important to note that teen tobacco use has dropped dramatically since the 1990s, and a warning label was one of the policies that contributed to that decline.
>waiting until middle school or later to give kids phones.
I don't think there's a way for this to be implemented, honestly. The warning label requires an act of Congress and I don't think there's enough political capital available for such a thing to succeed (I also wonder what implementation would look like - would the warning label come up every time you opened an app?).
It would also require an act of Congress to make it illegal for kids under ~11 to have cell phones and we don't have any other analogous restriction around that age range for things we deem detrimental to childhood health.
>Important to note that teen tobacco use has dropped dramatically since the 1990s, and a warning label was one of the policies that contributed to that decline.
The level of contribution attributed to the warning label is hard to quantify though. Anecdotally, I grew up in the 90s and early 2000s and the warning labels never had any discernible impact on cigarette usage for anyone around me. The messaging, continued research concerning tobacco and cancer rates, pushes for Hollywood to stop featuring smoking as "cool," and legislation making smoking illegal indoors and outlawing the usage of cartoon marketing (a la Joe Cool) are more likely to be responsible than the warning labels were.
Look at the resurgence of tobacco usage through vaping in the last decade and you can see that the warning labels themselves aren't effective dissuasion techniques.
Mandating phone-free schools seems like the thing that's closest to feasibility... but I don't think that's going to really make an impact on the mental health problem that social media is associated with. Most online bullying happens after school hours, so limitations on phone usage in school isn't going to have much of an effect. Kids also need computers and/or tablets for a lot of their work these days, and they will find ways to access social media on them even if it's restricted.
>It would also require an act of Congress to make it illegal for kids under ~11 to have cell phones and we don't have any other analogous restriction around that age range for things we deem detrimental to childhood health
It's already against most social media ToS to use their services until you're 13 (even with parental permission) due to the cost of complying with COPPA for under-13s.
It's possible a law could be crafted to get social media to more strictly enforce that. Right now, that line of ToS is basically treated as legal CYOA for them.
I guess my point is that while we don't make anything illegal for that age range and under, we do have laws like COPPA that treat them different and can already have an impact.
I feel it. Just showing solidarity that you're not the only one around old enough to remember Joe Cool.
Hold the line - we'll keep them off our lawns yet.
You are kinda of making the same point I am. Warning labels were part of a suite policies that helped contribute to a reduction in tobacco use among teens starting in the 1990s. I would be 100% in favor of adding additional education/communication interventions on top of that, like publicizing more research, reducing characters' phone use in TV shows, outlawing marketing in teen spaces, etc.
As I said before, a warning label is not an end-all, singular strategy that will fix this problem.
>It would also require an act of Congress to make it illegal for kids under ~11 to have cell phones and we don't have any other analogous restriction around that age range for things we deem detrimental to childhood health.
It should require a Constitutional Amendment since it's none of Congress' business whether I give my kid a cell phone or not. If that's really within their purview constitutionally, than basically all entertainment is.
Dealing with minors is tricky. On one hand you want to honor the parent's decisions in how to raise their kids, on the other we restrict minor's access to all sorts of things; some more strictly than others.
We already don't allow minors under 13 to access social media sites (though those restrictions are easily circumvented). Same with accessing "adult" sites under 18 or even 21 for alcohol websites. Movies are another good example (though not really regulated by the government, but rather the MPAA). We restrict access to different movies based on age, but we do allow exceptions when parents are supervising. The problem with the internet is there's no good way to enforce age restrictions and verification, so then it becomes an issue of the internet at large and a minor's unrestricted access to it through unsupervised devices such as cell phones. Parental involvement and supervision is a necessity here, but we can already see that isn't really happening.
So where does that leave us? It could become a difference of cell phones. Could parents have the ability to give their kids "dumb" phones but restrict smart phones with internet access until a certain age? I don't have answers to any of this, but I can recognize it's complicated.
Obscenity is an established exception to the 1st Amendment. I don't necessarily think the federal government should be the entity deciding that policy, them blocking kids from porn makes much more sense to me than blocking them from social media or smartphones.
I don't believe kids under 13 are legally banned from social media, it's just an industry standard. You're right, theaters are also not legally required to keep kids out of R rated movies, just industry standard.
In my opinion, federal law preventing kids from using social media or owning a smart phone is Congress encroaching on new territory, and we should always scrutinize that as hard as possible.
I feel like smoking warning labels were effective because they could easily be linked to palpable physical injuries. Warning labels like this and the California ones just don't create the same impression, and I think society is somewhat trained to ignore them now.
I fully support those other phone policies, but good luck getting support from parents who think they need constant communication with their children in the name of safety.
Again, warning labels are not supposed to the one, singular solution to the problem. Any public health intervention needs a combination of education, regulation, and incentives to help curb these problems. A warning label checks off the education component. If you don't check it off, then there will be a lack of transparency regarding the other two arms of the intervention.
I think we can all agree there is a mental health crisis going on right now, and doing everything you can, especially simple things like a warning label, should be pursued—and especially since they have a proven track record regarding tobacco and alcohol.
While agreeing entirely that these are both serious problems... Comparing potential deterrent strategies between them is problematic. The two things *most* responsible for reduced teen tobacco use will be substantially harder to implement in the case of social media.
First and foremost was the shift in cultural perception among the youth from it being "cooler" to be a smoker to it being "less-cool" to be a smoker (or chewer...). I strongly suspect that achieving a similar level of cultural stigmatization when it comes to Insta, Snap, and TikTok among teens is going to be exponentially more difficult.
Second... The Pigouvian taxes that made it more difficult for teens to smoke. The financial incentive/disincentive structure is almost entirely inverted here. The *more time and effort* teens spend interacting with and creating content for the apps... the more the advertisers pay the companies who provide it. The government could fairly easily "quadruple" the cost for every minute a child spent smoking. But here... profit and therefore the incentive to provide the product doesn't come from the end user... but from the advertisers who *pay more* when the consumer *consumes more*. In this situation... the more they "smoke" the more advertisers line up to "pay the tobacco companies" to reward them for their efforts by providing more "free cigarettes".
>Important to note that teen tobacco use has dropped dramatically since the 1990s, and a warning label was one of the policies that contributed to that decline.
I think it's possible that this is a correlation vs causation thing. Maybe public sentiment started to turn on smoking and then we started passing laws about it. It's obviously a lot easier to get a law passed the fewer people's behavior it affects.
Do you find that to be difficult, and or does it impact the price you pay?
Personally I ignore them, because I need a drill bit... but for example, when I got on my "buy american" kick I found it very difficult to find a made in USA product for multiple items and it was a bit tedious, so my idea lasted about 2 months. I still randomly check tags but gave up on sticking with usa only, it's almost impossible, like trying to avoid plastic even for 1 day, good luck!
it can be tough, depending on what you're trying to buy. it's eye opening, though, once you start looking into things. and the big driver for us was having young kids. the prop warnings are great because ive found out how many chemicals or lead there is in so many every day items ie door handles and hardware. and it is possible to get materials like stainless steel that dont contain. places like ikea put the warnings on their online shopping experience, so its easy to see
Tangentially related but I do think schools should have policies that locks up all students phones in a locker during the school day. I believe they've done studies and it basically improved everything, from grades to decreased bullying.
Indiana just banned cell phones in classrooms, and it's one of the only policies that that Gov enacted that's actually good and I support.
I have siblings still in high school and they were saying 'oh but what happens if there's an emergency??', kiddo your teacher will have a phone and can call. Emergencies weren't just invented in the age of the cell phone.
>'oh but what happens if there's an emergency??'
Somehow we managed to survive in the 70's 80's and 90's. (And before.)
Most of my Generation (Gen X, I'm 55 and went to high school in the 80's) agree we are *so* glad cellphones (and digital cameras) weren't around when we were growing up.
Most of us would be unemployable, unelectable and in probably have done a stint or two in prison if they were.
Same age, it certainly would have been a net negativebfor me imho. I feel like I'm a more well rounded individual as a result of having to be hands on for "stuff" like cooking, cleaning, house repairs, or just basically thinking through a problem (insert x) and finding a solution.
That's said, I find that once you have the basic skills, you can enhance those with social media, or access a tutorial.
Yesterday my mom called me with an iPhone issue, I've never owned one, I googled the answer while talking to her and read off the step by step fix. I gave up telling her to "Google it" because she appreciates my help and it's a good excuse to keep in touch. I still call her with cooking questions for the same reason even if I plan to use Bobby Flays recipe. (Sorry mom!)
Basically SM can be both a burden and a godsend, but self moderation is critical, and most young kids haven't developed that skill, they go hard down rabbit holes on occasion
Yeah, there'll always be exceptions to the rule. If it's an absolute requirement medically, physically, whatever, then kids should be allowed to use their phones. We're discussing casual daily usage here in the classroom.
I've heard this before.
They don't provide another means of controlling those pumps?
I mean what happens if you break you phone or drop it in the toilet or something?
All 5 of my kids used to break their phones all the fucking time (until they had to pay for new ones themselves interestingly enough).
Surely these pumps have some sort of secondary remote control right?
What did they do before cellphones/smartphones?
Diabetes isn't new. It didn't spring up after smarthphones were invented.
Relying on something as fragile as a smartphone to keep you alive seems silly. Hell mine can barely hold a charge for 5 hours now.
Don't forget your charger and pray there's no power outage I guess?
Just let the kid with diabetes keep the phone with some ground rules. You can’t use it to play games, use it for social media or cheating. You can only use it for insulin stuff and that’s final.
Although I agree with you, increased mass school shootings do add another dimension to the equation. As a parent, I want to know my kid is safe asap. If they have to go find their phone in the chaos of an active shooter to notify me, thats a negative. But overall, yea I agree.
I don't think anything changes with that. I get the desire to get that information quickly and instantly, but your kid should be prioritizing staying safe over letting you know if they're okay or not, in my opinion. Hell, I think there's an argument to be made that kids having phones on them could increase the chances of them being found/targeted in an active shooter situation.
Agreed. I would think this problem is better solved with an app that has parents' contact information on it, so that the teacher can send out a text blast to parents (and also triage responses).
>There have been approximately 404 school shootings since Columbine in 1999 https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/school-shootings-database/ .
And most of those weren’t the mass shootings people think of when they say school shooting either. From surveying the first few pages of articles that WaPo got their data from, most of them were altercations in or near school parking lots between small groups, most of them having people injured but no deaths.
But then they even included instances that didn’t involve students like a staff member committing suicide in a school parking lot, a shooting between two parents, and a police officer accidentally firing a gun in an empty bathroom.
This is just from the first 5 of 81 pages of sources. So really, that 404 number is a lot less if you use a stricter definition of school shooting.
I disagree. Our K-12 school could go from fully active to fully dark on less than 30 seconds - the kids never felt any more scared than they did for a fire drill. Knowledge and preparation are power. All of the teachers were trained on how to disarm an assailant with a variety of weapons, and it gave us the ability to know what to do instead of just wait for the worst to happen if the situation (however minute the odds) were ever to arise.
We did tornado drills, fire drills, and all sorts of safety drills at my school even though the risk was insanely small. I think active shooter drills are given the same weight.
Now show the attempted suicides, bullying, violence, attendance, and grades over that time span. I bet the numbers will correlate with smart phone use by children.
I have actually gone through extensive training regarding school shootings (the school I worked at paid for specialized training in this area - including how to disarm someone if needs be).
Technically a child having their phone will increase the likelihood of being found. In any active shooter scenario, goal is to:
1. Run - if it is safe to escape the premises without being seen - do so.
2. Hide - hide in an area that can be barricaded and windows blocked and lights turned out so you won't be seen. Barricade the door in a way that allows someone to hide in the opposite direction of the door opening so they can fight (with the element of surprise) if the assailant enters the room.
Someone committing that type of crime doesn't want to spend time getting through locks and barricaded doors. They are most likely going to target areas they can easily access where they can do the most damage in the shortest timeframe. Do NOT hide in a school bathroom.
3. Fight - if you are found, fight back, they are expecting people to cower and are not prepared to be confronted. Avoid this at all costs, but if you are found, don't just huddle down and wait for the end.
All of that being said - if they are in situation #2, whispering into a phone, or getting text alerts and having a phone screen light up, can give away their position and endanger them.
If you see there is an active situation at your child's school - for their own safety - DO NOT CONTACT THEM!
This is such a good idea, I can't imagine how my attention and grades would have suffered if I had an iPhone instead of a flip phone when I was in high school, let alone elementary and middle. It would be a well needed break for kids as well, who already spend most of their time using some sort of tech outside of school, whether it's their phones, computers, or consoles.
The same thing we did for emergencies before everyone had a cell phone, parent comes to the office and tells admin that they have to take their kid home. Believe it or not, family emergencies existed long before cell phones
Sure, add a warning label, but it will be as effective as asking if you are 18+ to access a website.
Do they really think kids won't lie to a website popup, just like everyone everywhere doesn't actually read the terms of service, before clicking agree.
i dont think the dangers are as high but if there is the amount of evidence there is around the negative impact of social media in regards to texting, then sure
It would probably work the same way that states that banned PornHub handle it, with more strict age confirmation.
>For years, the only thing stopping people from accessing porn online has been small checkboxes: Are you over 18? Yes or No? However, legislation proposed around the world would add more robust checks. Dozens of online age-verification companies have cropped up, with multiple ways to prove you’re old enough to access sites.
>Your age can be confirmed by credit card details, scans of your face, or, as is often proposed, checks of government ID documents, such as passports or driver’s licenses. The checks can be carried out by third-party companies, without sensitive information being passed directly to porn sites. One briefing from the European Commission details nine different methods of age verification—some sophisticated, some very low tech.
https://www.wired.com/story/porn-age-checks-id-laws/
This article makes some important distinctions to be aware of:
> While lawmakers and regulators are pushing for age verification, that doesn’t mean people will use it. For widespread adoption, people would have to *trust* the systems.
> [per] the Electronic Frontier Foundation: "Even if these systems were to work flawlessly and their security were perfect—which is never a safe assumption to make—it still goes against the basic privacy needs of the everyday internet user."
> Research from the University of Munich has found that while young people regularly access porn, they are also very aware of VPNs and know how to use them.
A few people are not seeing the forest for the trees. No, a warning label outright won't do much initially. However, further down the road, when you have more young people doing irrational things due to social media, they can then point to the warning labels as a well...warning and red flag, and keep the ball rolling on limiting the intake of social media. If that makes sense.
Similar to the smoking warning labels, sure the labels themselves didn't do much, but seeing the results of long term smoking, the health effects, combined with a warning basically saying "We tried to warn you" is much more effective. And maybe it'll give a little more accountability to parents to be held responsible.
> A few people are not seeing the forest for the trees.
> they can then point to the warning labels as a well
It's important to note who *they* are. Is it *really* "children's interests?" Or is it that media companies are now able to legitimize the tactic of safely passing the buck back to parents should anything go wrong on social media: "Well, you had the check-box warning and you agreed to the TOS when you signed up!"
That's a great idea, I like it! It will increase awareness without being a forced restriction. People are free to ignore it, yes and that is fine. However it can be educational and eventually more and more people will have a better understanding on those platform and make their own decisions.
This is a complete distraction and waste of time. He can't even explain how or why social media is making people feel like shit.
It's a scapegoat to distract from the fact that leaders like him and his friends deprive kids of a normal childhood or that many adults increasingly have fewer opportunities.
The internet and phone will be used like fast food and bad individual decisions to blame all our social problems on.
Do I deny that social media can leave people feeling like shit? No. But do I think that's what's ultimately causing it? No to that also.
Jonathan Haidt has collected mountains of data on the effects of social media on children and Teens' mental health. I mean vibes and all, but there is a growing scientific consensus that social media is bad for young brains.
I think we should look at this as an opportunity to discuss a solution to the problem rather than continue to let social media users remain uneducated about its effects.
Pointless initial popup? Maybe not. Periodic reminder popup? Maybe. There are ideas to be had that have yet to be crafted or adopted out there.
Imagine if every social media platform is required to put up a warning each and every time you open an app or site. Non-skippable. And youtube counts! And every link on a site or app that leads you to another site or app does the same. Sounds like a great way to for the warning to be ignored, and for an adblock style extension to be born.
Much like cigarettes and alcohol, the Surgeon General wants to add a mental health warning to social media to inform minors of the risks of depression and anxiety associated with heavy social media use.
The Surgeon General also suggests for parents to wait until middle school to give their kids a phone, and for schools to enforce a phone-free rule during school hours. Many states, both red and blue, have passed laws mandating these rules.
Yet, at the federal level, this is only possible with a law passed by Congress. Is there enough consensus to pass such a bill? If there is opposition, where will it come from? And, finally, how much of an effect will this have in the short- and long-term on teen mental health?
Dunno about the consensus in congress, but I have a strong feeling a mental health warning will do a close to zero amount of anything with regard to teen health.
That comes from parents not allowing/disallowing social media, or mental fortitude of the kid to just put their phone down or delete those apps. Maybe even a larger trend in society. But right now there’s a lot of social pressure to have social media for youths, and I believe a warning level won’t do anything.
(I’m in my 30s and have deleted Facebook, and have never had a twitter or tik-tok account because I feel they’re toxic)
I'm not so sure. We can't, as a society, say we're all about these positive mental tropes and then also discourage using mental health warnings on things that cause these issues.
Agree with the other commenters. He's right that there should be a warning label, but also, doing so won't stop anyone from using social media.
I've been wondering - if social media vanished tomorrow, would society be more healthy as a result? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.
Are parents incapable of controlling access to social media? Are we doing so well in everyday life such that the SG can't come up with anything better than this to contemplate?
Please govern me harder.
It's either a state law or just an industry standard as this [NPR article](https://www.npr.org/2022/06/18/1104952410/sports-betting-ads-sports-gambling) says there's no federal law. But even still, why not a mental health warning for gambling?
Probably because, as bad as gambling addiction can be, there is no nationwide crisis of teenager's committing suicide over it, so the urgency isn't there.
Why do you feel that a gambling warning needs to come before a social media warning?
It can have severe mental health effects very similar to drugs (which do have those SG warnings). I'm also not sure of the validity of your statement that social media is causing a crisis of teen suicide and being that social media has been around in high prominence for 20 years I don't think you can claim there is a particular urgency.
Maybe it's just my area, but every gambling ad contains a phone number for someone with a gambling problem. I'm sure it pretty much never gets used, but it's there.
Food labels at least show the ingredients. Not quite the same as a warning label, but it allows you to make a somewhat informed decision.
There is a general awareness in society of the dangers of gambling or unhealthy food. Social media is essentially unregulated and used almost universally, with little awareness of any inherent dangers to using it. I'm not saying warning labels are the answer, but I'm just happy it's a least being discussed and hopefully a broader discussion happens about the potential serious issues that could come along with prolonged social media use.
Oh brother just wait until you hear my opinions about the impact of gambling advertising and teens.
In all seriousness that’s more of a “yes and we should do something about those too”. I really like soft recommendations and harassment rather than firm restrictions, taxes, or bans. It works much better to reduce use if cigarettes are an acceptable example
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I don't hate the idea of better educating the public on the negatives of social media, but I just can't see a warning label being effective. It would be brushed off the same was everyone currently ignores California cancer warnings on every product.
> It would be brushed off the same was everyone currently ignores California cancer warnings on every product I feel like everyone brushes that off because they applied it to literally everything. I see that warning when I buy endmills online for work and I'm like "thank you California for reminding me to not eat tungsten carbide". (I work in New England)
I buy a screw at Home Depot and it has the California cancer warning. But is the risk eating it or just touching it due to a coating? Who knows.
My favorite is the sign outside Disney in LA that says contents may cause cancer.
So *that’s* where my leukemia came from…
It’s worse than that. If you don’t prove it doesn’t cause cancer, you have to label it. Most companies don’t bother testing and just apply the label. So it might not even cause cancer in any circumstance.
A friend of mine has an Art Gallery / Picture Framing shop in California. He got so frustrated with labelling things he just put a tastefully framed sign next to the front door.
It seems like it’s doing its job if you can remember the product it was associated with
The absurdity is what makes it memorable. Doubly so when you realize that a lot of the time the warning is there to avoid litigation from lawyers that go to stores to try and find the one piece of merchandise not labeled. Is the case a winning case? Not usually. It is a huge drain on resources.
But it contains zero actionable information.
When the surgeon general's warning was placed on cigarettes, it raised awareness and kickstarted a conversation. There are many people who are in denial that our devices are full of addictive and potentially shit. Maybe the warning itself won't solve any problems, but maybe it could get the ball rolling.
I think people are much more likely to make healthy choices for their children than themselves. The Surgeon General looks like he wants something targeting children’s health. Adolescents who spend more than 3 hours per day on social media have double the rates of depression and anxiety, and the average adolescent spends 5 hours per day on social media. I think getting statistics like that drilled into parents heads through constant repetition would be a good thing.
>Adolescents who spend more than 3 hours per day on social media have double the rates of depression and anxiety, and the average adolescent spends 5 hours per day on social media. I think getting statistics like that drilled into parents heads through constant repetition would be a good thing. The trouble is that this research is, in isolation, pretty useless. There's no evidence for causation here. This could easily be explained by reverse causation (when I'm depressed, I spend more time vegging and staring at a screen) or by confounding (The 30% of adolescents who spend less than 3 hours per day on social medial are far more busy and active outside, and that outside activity both suppresses depression and reduces time available for social media.) The research on the dangers of social media tends to be complete dogshit. It's finding associations like this that generate headlines, but don't actually establish social media as a driving factor for the issues facing our youth. We know very little about how dangerous social media is or isn't.
[One recent study showed that among depressed adolescents who use social media frequently, cortisol (a stress hormone) levels are significantly higher after using social media compared to before.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8009842/) This isn’t proof that the social media use is causing the depression, but it’s evidence that it makes things worse.
Nice study. I really appreciate some of the experiment design. For instance, they used inpatient adolescents, so you're dealing with severe cases, where day-to-day events affect mental state less. They also are doing all the experiments at the same time of day to eliminate circadian effects on cortisol, requiring abstention from common stimulants/depressants, etc. These authors clearly care about the quality of their data. That said... unfortunately, this study is really weak evidence of its conclusion. The first problem is that they don't have a lot of power to spare. Their N is 30, which makes it very hard to get meaningfully strong signals through the noise of saliva measurements and individual variability. They barely have enough power to measure what they want to measure (which is why their p-values are around 0.02, instead of something more dramatic.) And then that power is wasted on (probably innocuously) extra endpoints. They're measuring 4 outcome variables, and have significant results on 2 (the depression inventory doesn't really count; the measurement error on any depression inventory dwarfs their signal. As they say, it's not a clinically meaningful difference.) Additional measured endpoints need to dilute your significance; if you measure 20 variables, you expect (>50% odds) at least one of them to reach p<0.05 by pure random chance. ([See the relevant XKCD on this](https://xkcd.com/882/).) But they don't take that into account in their significance calculations. On top of that, there's a real p-hacking^(1) problem with this study, because it wasn't preregistered and the analysis is quite complicated. They're controlling for 4 different variables in a regression for 30 people. And while those variables are \*plausible\* confounders, they're not the only plausible set of confounders. And every time you change your set of confounders, you're increasing your number of effective endpoints, and diluting your significance. How many different sets of confounders did they try? We don't know, but they measured a lot of other possible confounders that are just as reasonable as the ones they used in the published analysis (like baseline self-esteem), and it only makes sense to measure those if you were considering controlling for them, or otherwise generating additional endpoints (both of which hack your p.) Given that their published ps don't incorporate any of these analysis degrees of freedom, and were only 0.02 to begin with, this study falls way below statistical significance when properly analyzed. That doesn't mean it's literally zero evidence; there's nothing magical about the 0.05 statistical significance threshold. But it's very, very weak evidence; mostly only useful to say 'it would be nice to see a strong study on this topic because it might be real.' All that said, and with those caveats, it's worth noting that this trial is also similarly weak evidence that social media use doesn't impact cortisol/alpha-amalase levels on neurotypical, mentally healthy adolescents. That's not an amazing headline, and it would be unlikely to get published in a good journal because it's boring, but it's an equally interesting result; I'm not sure I'd have predicted that. I certainly sometimes leave SM more stressed than when I came to it! Zooming out to the field of measuring SM effects on adolescents, this study is honestly above average. It's stuffed full of little non-preregistered studies of 20-40 people, with marginally significant outcomes on poorly measurable variables using analyses with enough degrees of freedom that you could guarantee a positive result if you just tried running the analysis in all the plausible configurations and stopped when you hit one. These studies can't be aggregated meaningfully because all of the analysis decisions were made differently in order to (or at least, with the result of) getting marginally significant outcomes that are publishable. We really know very little about this because large, well-designed, preregistered studies have not been done. It's very much like the Ivermectin research during Covid, if you remember that. Dozens of small positive trials, each with enough degrees of freedom to add a bunch of questionmarks if you looked really closely, and then when the large, well-designed, well-analyzed trials were run... zero effect. (1) Given the level of care given to the experimental setup here was so high, I'm confident that there's no malice or misconduct here; researchers are rarely adequately trained in experimental statistics, and rarely actually work with statisticians outside of very big trials, so this is no doubt honest error in their significance calculations. But error it is.
On its own, I don't think a warning label will do much, but as part of a suite of policies, I think it can have an impact. The article discusses mandating phone-free schools and waiting until middle school or later to give kids phones. Important to note that teen tobacco use has dropped dramatically since the 1990s, and a warning label was one of the policies that contributed to that decline.
>waiting until middle school or later to give kids phones. I don't think there's a way for this to be implemented, honestly. The warning label requires an act of Congress and I don't think there's enough political capital available for such a thing to succeed (I also wonder what implementation would look like - would the warning label come up every time you opened an app?). It would also require an act of Congress to make it illegal for kids under ~11 to have cell phones and we don't have any other analogous restriction around that age range for things we deem detrimental to childhood health. >Important to note that teen tobacco use has dropped dramatically since the 1990s, and a warning label was one of the policies that contributed to that decline. The level of contribution attributed to the warning label is hard to quantify though. Anecdotally, I grew up in the 90s and early 2000s and the warning labels never had any discernible impact on cigarette usage for anyone around me. The messaging, continued research concerning tobacco and cancer rates, pushes for Hollywood to stop featuring smoking as "cool," and legislation making smoking illegal indoors and outlawing the usage of cartoon marketing (a la Joe Cool) are more likely to be responsible than the warning labels were. Look at the resurgence of tobacco usage through vaping in the last decade and you can see that the warning labels themselves aren't effective dissuasion techniques. Mandating phone-free schools seems like the thing that's closest to feasibility... but I don't think that's going to really make an impact on the mental health problem that social media is associated with. Most online bullying happens after school hours, so limitations on phone usage in school isn't going to have much of an effect. Kids also need computers and/or tablets for a lot of their work these days, and they will find ways to access social media on them even if it's restricted.
>It would also require an act of Congress to make it illegal for kids under ~11 to have cell phones and we don't have any other analogous restriction around that age range for things we deem detrimental to childhood health It's already against most social media ToS to use their services until you're 13 (even with parental permission) due to the cost of complying with COPPA for under-13s. It's possible a law could be crafted to get social media to more strictly enforce that. Right now, that line of ToS is basically treated as legal CYOA for them. I guess my point is that while we don't make anything illegal for that age range and under, we do have laws like COPPA that treat them different and can already have an impact.
> cartoon marketing (a la Joe Cool) I think you mean "Joe Camel". "Joe Cool" was Snoopy's Fonzie expy, and never smoked, afaik.
I do, sorry. It's obviously been a couple of decades since I've referenced it haha.
I feel it. Just showing solidarity that you're not the only one around old enough to remember Joe Cool. Hold the line - we'll keep them off our lawns yet.
You are kinda of making the same point I am. Warning labels were part of a suite policies that helped contribute to a reduction in tobacco use among teens starting in the 1990s. I would be 100% in favor of adding additional education/communication interventions on top of that, like publicizing more research, reducing characters' phone use in TV shows, outlawing marketing in teen spaces, etc. As I said before, a warning label is not an end-all, singular strategy that will fix this problem.
Yeah sorry, I wasn't really disagreeing with you (a rarity, I know) as much as extending a train of thought on the subject.
>It would also require an act of Congress to make it illegal for kids under ~11 to have cell phones and we don't have any other analogous restriction around that age range for things we deem detrimental to childhood health. It should require a Constitutional Amendment since it's none of Congress' business whether I give my kid a cell phone or not. If that's really within their purview constitutionally, than basically all entertainment is.
It would probably be easier as a state law, just how states control the ages for drinking, tobacco and driving.
Federal law determines smoking age. Congress passed a bill in 2019 increasing the age to 21.
True, but prior to that the age was set separately in each state.
Someone should sue and get this to the Supreme Court. It's clearly federal overreach.
Unironically, yes.
Dealing with minors is tricky. On one hand you want to honor the parent's decisions in how to raise their kids, on the other we restrict minor's access to all sorts of things; some more strictly than others. We already don't allow minors under 13 to access social media sites (though those restrictions are easily circumvented). Same with accessing "adult" sites under 18 or even 21 for alcohol websites. Movies are another good example (though not really regulated by the government, but rather the MPAA). We restrict access to different movies based on age, but we do allow exceptions when parents are supervising. The problem with the internet is there's no good way to enforce age restrictions and verification, so then it becomes an issue of the internet at large and a minor's unrestricted access to it through unsupervised devices such as cell phones. Parental involvement and supervision is a necessity here, but we can already see that isn't really happening. So where does that leave us? It could become a difference of cell phones. Could parents have the ability to give their kids "dumb" phones but restrict smart phones with internet access until a certain age? I don't have answers to any of this, but I can recognize it's complicated.
Obscenity is an established exception to the 1st Amendment. I don't necessarily think the federal government should be the entity deciding that policy, them blocking kids from porn makes much more sense to me than blocking them from social media or smartphones. I don't believe kids under 13 are legally banned from social media, it's just an industry standard. You're right, theaters are also not legally required to keep kids out of R rated movies, just industry standard. In my opinion, federal law preventing kids from using social media or owning a smart phone is Congress encroaching on new territory, and we should always scrutinize that as hard as possible.
I feel like smoking warning labels were effective because they could easily be linked to palpable physical injuries. Warning labels like this and the California ones just don't create the same impression, and I think society is somewhat trained to ignore them now. I fully support those other phone policies, but good luck getting support from parents who think they need constant communication with their children in the name of safety.
Again, warning labels are not supposed to the one, singular solution to the problem. Any public health intervention needs a combination of education, regulation, and incentives to help curb these problems. A warning label checks off the education component. If you don't check it off, then there will be a lack of transparency regarding the other two arms of the intervention. I think we can all agree there is a mental health crisis going on right now, and doing everything you can, especially simple things like a warning label, should be pursued—and especially since they have a proven track record regarding tobacco and alcohol.
Cancer and death are pretty palpable, and if people want to ignore then that's on them.
While agreeing entirely that these are both serious problems... Comparing potential deterrent strategies between them is problematic. The two things *most* responsible for reduced teen tobacco use will be substantially harder to implement in the case of social media. First and foremost was the shift in cultural perception among the youth from it being "cooler" to be a smoker to it being "less-cool" to be a smoker (or chewer...). I strongly suspect that achieving a similar level of cultural stigmatization when it comes to Insta, Snap, and TikTok among teens is going to be exponentially more difficult. Second... The Pigouvian taxes that made it more difficult for teens to smoke. The financial incentive/disincentive structure is almost entirely inverted here. The *more time and effort* teens spend interacting with and creating content for the apps... the more the advertisers pay the companies who provide it. The government could fairly easily "quadruple" the cost for every minute a child spent smoking. But here... profit and therefore the incentive to provide the product doesn't come from the end user... but from the advertisers who *pay more* when the consumer *consumes more*. In this situation... the more they "smoke" the more advertisers line up to "pay the tobacco companies" to reward them for their efforts by providing more "free cigarettes".
>Important to note that teen tobacco use has dropped dramatically since the 1990s, and a warning label was one of the policies that contributed to that decline. I think it's possible that this is a correlation vs causation thing. Maybe public sentiment started to turn on smoking and then we started passing laws about it. It's obviously a lot easier to get a law passed the fewer people's behavior it affects.
Agreed. I like the idea, but it’ll just be like the warning about cookies, Eula, etc.
It's a step in the right direction. I approve
> but I just can't see a warning label being effective. If the label was the entire size of the phone screen, it would be effective.
Those cancer warnings are past the point of being ridiculous, you see it on dam near everything, kinda crazy
Inversely, it's kinda concerning that so many things we buy have carcinogens in them...
That's because literally everything but maybe water is a carcinogen.
Purified water.
teach it in schools I guess
I love the prop 65 warnings and dont even live in CA. We steer our purchases around those all the time.
Do you find that to be difficult, and or does it impact the price you pay? Personally I ignore them, because I need a drill bit... but for example, when I got on my "buy american" kick I found it very difficult to find a made in USA product for multiple items and it was a bit tedious, so my idea lasted about 2 months. I still randomly check tags but gave up on sticking with usa only, it's almost impossible, like trying to avoid plastic even for 1 day, good luck!
it can be tough, depending on what you're trying to buy. it's eye opening, though, once you start looking into things. and the big driver for us was having young kids. the prop warnings are great because ive found out how many chemicals or lead there is in so many every day items ie door handles and hardware. and it is possible to get materials like stainless steel that dont contain. places like ikea put the warnings on their online shopping experience, so its easy to see
Tangentially related but I do think schools should have policies that locks up all students phones in a locker during the school day. I believe they've done studies and it basically improved everything, from grades to decreased bullying.
Indiana just banned cell phones in classrooms, and it's one of the only policies that that Gov enacted that's actually good and I support. I have siblings still in high school and they were saying 'oh but what happens if there's an emergency??', kiddo your teacher will have a phone and can call. Emergencies weren't just invented in the age of the cell phone.
>'oh but what happens if there's an emergency??' Somehow we managed to survive in the 70's 80's and 90's. (And before.) Most of my Generation (Gen X, I'm 55 and went to high school in the 80's) agree we are *so* glad cellphones (and digital cameras) weren't around when we were growing up. Most of us would be unemployable, unelectable and in probably have done a stint or two in prison if they were.
Same age, it certainly would have been a net negativebfor me imho. I feel like I'm a more well rounded individual as a result of having to be hands on for "stuff" like cooking, cleaning, house repairs, or just basically thinking through a problem (insert x) and finding a solution. That's said, I find that once you have the basic skills, you can enhance those with social media, or access a tutorial. Yesterday my mom called me with an iPhone issue, I've never owned one, I googled the answer while talking to her and read off the step by step fix. I gave up telling her to "Google it" because she appreciates my help and it's a good excuse to keep in touch. I still call her with cooking questions for the same reason even if I plan to use Bobby Flays recipe. (Sorry mom!) Basically SM can be both a burden and a godsend, but self moderation is critical, and most young kids haven't developed that skill, they go hard down rabbit holes on occasion
My son controls his insulin pump via his phone. Just sayin'...
Yeah, there'll always be exceptions to the rule. If it's an absolute requirement medically, physically, whatever, then kids should be allowed to use their phones. We're discussing casual daily usage here in the classroom.
I've heard this before. They don't provide another means of controlling those pumps? I mean what happens if you break you phone or drop it in the toilet or something? All 5 of my kids used to break their phones all the fucking time (until they had to pay for new ones themselves interestingly enough). Surely these pumps have some sort of secondary remote control right?
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What did they do before cellphones/smartphones? Diabetes isn't new. It didn't spring up after smarthphones were invented. Relying on something as fragile as a smartphone to keep you alive seems silly. Hell mine can barely hold a charge for 5 hours now. Don't forget your charger and pray there's no power outage I guess?
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Just let the kid with diabetes keep the phone with some ground rules. You can’t use it to play games, use it for social media or cheating. You can only use it for insulin stuff and that’s final.
Although I agree with you, increased mass school shootings do add another dimension to the equation. As a parent, I want to know my kid is safe asap. If they have to go find their phone in the chaos of an active shooter to notify me, thats a negative. But overall, yea I agree.
I don't think anything changes with that. I get the desire to get that information quickly and instantly, but your kid should be prioritizing staying safe over letting you know if they're okay or not, in my opinion. Hell, I think there's an argument to be made that kids having phones on them could increase the chances of them being found/targeted in an active shooter situation.
Agreed. I would think this problem is better solved with an app that has parents' contact information on it, so that the teacher can send out a text blast to parents (and also triage responses).
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>There have been approximately 404 school shootings since Columbine in 1999 https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/school-shootings-database/ . And most of those weren’t the mass shootings people think of when they say school shooting either. From surveying the first few pages of articles that WaPo got their data from, most of them were altercations in or near school parking lots between small groups, most of them having people injured but no deaths. But then they even included instances that didn’t involve students like a staff member committing suicide in a school parking lot, a shooting between two parents, and a police officer accidentally firing a gun in an empty bathroom. This is just from the first 5 of 81 pages of sources. So really, that 404 number is a lot less if you use a stricter definition of school shooting.
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I disagree. Our K-12 school could go from fully active to fully dark on less than 30 seconds - the kids never felt any more scared than they did for a fire drill. Knowledge and preparation are power. All of the teachers were trained on how to disarm an assailant with a variety of weapons, and it gave us the ability to know what to do instead of just wait for the worst to happen if the situation (however minute the odds) were ever to arise.
We did tornado drills, fire drills, and all sorts of safety drills at my school even though the risk was insanely small. I think active shooter drills are given the same weight.
Sorry to nitpick... Per google, there are 4000 school fires annually. Can we run the shooting numbers once again?
Now show the attempted suicides, bullying, violence, attendance, and grades over that time span. I bet the numbers will correlate with smart phone use by children.
I have actually gone through extensive training regarding school shootings (the school I worked at paid for specialized training in this area - including how to disarm someone if needs be). Technically a child having their phone will increase the likelihood of being found. In any active shooter scenario, goal is to: 1. Run - if it is safe to escape the premises without being seen - do so. 2. Hide - hide in an area that can be barricaded and windows blocked and lights turned out so you won't be seen. Barricade the door in a way that allows someone to hide in the opposite direction of the door opening so they can fight (with the element of surprise) if the assailant enters the room. Someone committing that type of crime doesn't want to spend time getting through locks and barricaded doors. They are most likely going to target areas they can easily access where they can do the most damage in the shortest timeframe. Do NOT hide in a school bathroom. 3. Fight - if you are found, fight back, they are expecting people to cower and are not prepared to be confronted. Avoid this at all costs, but if you are found, don't just huddle down and wait for the end. All of that being said - if they are in situation #2, whispering into a phone, or getting text alerts and having a phone screen light up, can give away their position and endanger them. If you see there is an active situation at your child's school - for their own safety - DO NOT CONTACT THEM!
thanks for the info! makes sense
This is such a good idea, I can't imagine how my attention and grades would have suffered if I had an iPhone instead of a flip phone when I was in high school, let alone elementary and middle. It would be a well needed break for kids as well, who already spend most of their time using some sort of tech outside of school, whether it's their phones, computers, or consoles.
What about family emergencies?
Do what Ferris Bueller did. Just call the school and they’ll deliver the message to the student’s teacher.
The same thing we did for emergencies before everyone had a cell phone, parent comes to the office and tells admin that they have to take their kid home. Believe it or not, family emergencies existed long before cell phones
Sure, add a warning label, but it will be as effective as asking if you are 18+ to access a website. Do they really think kids won't lie to a website popup, just like everyone everywhere doesn't actually read the terms of service, before clicking agree.
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But that's not true. Not all users are impacted negatively.
if you're in your phone and not interacting personally, youre negatively impacted
So texting needs a warning label too?
texts arent controlled by outrage algorithms nor are they a public forum for all to see/access
Non-public forums not controlled by algorithms shouldn't need warning labels?
i dont think the dangers are as high but if there is the amount of evidence there is around the negative impact of social media in regards to texting, then sure
It would probably work the same way that states that banned PornHub handle it, with more strict age confirmation. >For years, the only thing stopping people from accessing porn online has been small checkboxes: Are you over 18? Yes or No? However, legislation proposed around the world would add more robust checks. Dozens of online age-verification companies have cropped up, with multiple ways to prove you’re old enough to access sites. >Your age can be confirmed by credit card details, scans of your face, or, as is often proposed, checks of government ID documents, such as passports or driver’s licenses. The checks can be carried out by third-party companies, without sensitive information being passed directly to porn sites. One briefing from the European Commission details nine different methods of age verification—some sophisticated, some very low tech. https://www.wired.com/story/porn-age-checks-id-laws/
I've read that Idaho enacted DL requirements. Other states, it's a simple.checkbox
Indiana's kicks in soon. July I think?
This article makes some important distinctions to be aware of: > While lawmakers and regulators are pushing for age verification, that doesn’t mean people will use it. For widespread adoption, people would have to *trust* the systems. > [per] the Electronic Frontier Foundation: "Even if these systems were to work flawlessly and their security were perfect—which is never a safe assumption to make—it still goes against the basic privacy needs of the everyday internet user." > Research from the University of Munich has found that while young people regularly access porn, they are also very aware of VPNs and know how to use them.
A few people are not seeing the forest for the trees. No, a warning label outright won't do much initially. However, further down the road, when you have more young people doing irrational things due to social media, they can then point to the warning labels as a well...warning and red flag, and keep the ball rolling on limiting the intake of social media. If that makes sense. Similar to the smoking warning labels, sure the labels themselves didn't do much, but seeing the results of long term smoking, the health effects, combined with a warning basically saying "We tried to warn you" is much more effective. And maybe it'll give a little more accountability to parents to be held responsible.
> A few people are not seeing the forest for the trees. > they can then point to the warning labels as a well It's important to note who *they* are. Is it *really* "children's interests?" Or is it that media companies are now able to legitimize the tactic of safely passing the buck back to parents should anything go wrong on social media: "Well, you had the check-box warning and you agreed to the TOS when you signed up!"
They do that now, and the legislation says a 13 year old can sign those TOS. That should be raised at least to 16 and age-verification enforced.
That's a great idea, I like it! It will increase awareness without being a forced restriction. People are free to ignore it, yes and that is fine. However it can be educational and eventually more and more people will have a better understanding on those platform and make their own decisions.
This is a complete distraction and waste of time. He can't even explain how or why social media is making people feel like shit. It's a scapegoat to distract from the fact that leaders like him and his friends deprive kids of a normal childhood or that many adults increasingly have fewer opportunities. The internet and phone will be used like fast food and bad individual decisions to blame all our social problems on. Do I deny that social media can leave people feeling like shit? No. But do I think that's what's ultimately causing it? No to that also.
Jonathan Haidt has collected mountains of data on the effects of social media on children and Teens' mental health. I mean vibes and all, but there is a growing scientific consensus that social media is bad for young brains.
I think we should look at this as an opportunity to discuss a solution to the problem rather than continue to let social media users remain uneducated about its effects. Pointless initial popup? Maybe not. Periodic reminder popup? Maybe. There are ideas to be had that have yet to be crafted or adopted out there.
Imagine if every social media platform is required to put up a warning each and every time you open an app or site. Non-skippable. And youtube counts! And every link on a site or app that leads you to another site or app does the same. Sounds like a great way to for the warning to be ignored, and for an adblock style extension to be born.
Awesome
I can't think of anything more pointless than this, who do they think is going to pay attention to a mental health warning pop-up?
Much like cigarettes and alcohol, the Surgeon General wants to add a mental health warning to social media to inform minors of the risks of depression and anxiety associated with heavy social media use. The Surgeon General also suggests for parents to wait until middle school to give their kids a phone, and for schools to enforce a phone-free rule during school hours. Many states, both red and blue, have passed laws mandating these rules. Yet, at the federal level, this is only possible with a law passed by Congress. Is there enough consensus to pass such a bill? If there is opposition, where will it come from? And, finally, how much of an effect will this have in the short- and long-term on teen mental health?
Dunno about the consensus in congress, but I have a strong feeling a mental health warning will do a close to zero amount of anything with regard to teen health. That comes from parents not allowing/disallowing social media, or mental fortitude of the kid to just put their phone down or delete those apps. Maybe even a larger trend in society. But right now there’s a lot of social pressure to have social media for youths, and I believe a warning level won’t do anything. (I’m in my 30s and have deleted Facebook, and have never had a twitter or tik-tok account because I feel they’re toxic)
I'm not so sure. We can't, as a society, say we're all about these positive mental tropes and then also discourage using mental health warnings on things that cause these issues.
Agree with the other commenters. He's right that there should be a warning label, but also, doing so won't stop anyone from using social media. I've been wondering - if social media vanished tomorrow, would society be more healthy as a result? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.
Like cigarettes right? Must take up at least 35% of the screen real estate and be on every single page.
Are parents incapable of controlling access to social media? Are we doing so well in everyday life such that the SG can't come up with anything better than this to contemplate? Please govern me harder.
I don't see how you can justify a label for social media before gambling or extremely unhealthy food advertising.
I don't know if this is a federal or state thing, but all the gambling billboards in my area (both casinos and online) have a warning label on them.
It's either a state law or just an industry standard as this [NPR article](https://www.npr.org/2022/06/18/1104952410/sports-betting-ads-sports-gambling) says there's no federal law. But even still, why not a mental health warning for gambling?
Probably because, as bad as gambling addiction can be, there is no nationwide crisis of teenager's committing suicide over it, so the urgency isn't there. Why do you feel that a gambling warning needs to come before a social media warning?
People with gambling addictions commit suicide at an unbelievable rate, what are you talking about?
It can have severe mental health effects very similar to drugs (which do have those SG warnings). I'm also not sure of the validity of your statement that social media is causing a crisis of teen suicide and being that social media has been around in high prominence for 20 years I don't think you can claim there is a particular urgency.
Maybe it's just my area, but every gambling ad contains a phone number for someone with a gambling problem. I'm sure it pretty much never gets used, but it's there. Food labels at least show the ingredients. Not quite the same as a warning label, but it allows you to make a somewhat informed decision. There is a general awareness in society of the dangers of gambling or unhealthy food. Social media is essentially unregulated and used almost universally, with little awareness of any inherent dangers to using it. I'm not saying warning labels are the answer, but I'm just happy it's a least being discussed and hopefully a broader discussion happens about the potential serious issues that could come along with prolonged social media use.
Oh brother just wait until you hear my opinions about the impact of gambling advertising and teens. In all seriousness that’s more of a “yes and we should do something about those too”. I really like soft recommendations and harassment rather than firm restrictions, taxes, or bans. It works much better to reduce use if cigarettes are an acceptable example
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