U.S. Surgeon General calls for action on young people’s mental health crisis

One of the leading US health officials, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, calls for urgent safety measures, transparency and accountability to tackle the harm social media is doing to children.

Writing for the New York Times, the Surgeon General states:

“The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency — and social media has emerged as an important contributor… 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?”

Such concern has prompted the Surgeon General to endorse the implementation of warning labels on all social media platforms and services, drawing on the success of the warning labels used for tobacco in increasing awareness and changing behaviour. Prefacing this call with the acknowledgement that warning labels would not make social media immediately safe, and would require further action from policymakers, platforms and the public.

Currently, social media platforms and services lack the necessary safety-by-design principles to ensure that young people are safe and empowered, undermining their mental health and well-being. The debate over the viability and effectiveness of warning labels continues, but what remains clear is that policymakers must regulate social media platforms and services with the rights of children in mind if we are to curb the mental health crisis among young people.

Read the Surgeon General’s full article for the New York Times here