Phil Lewis: The U.S. surgeon general called for a warning label on social media platforms that says they may damage teens’ mental health

The U.S. surgeon general called for a warning label on social media platforms that says they may damage teens’ mental health

Surgeon General Calls for Warning Labels on Social Media Platformswww.nytimes.com Dr. Vivek Murthy said he would urge Congress to require a warning that social media use can harm teenagers’ mental health.

Can they also put a warning on climate change and school shootings? And peaceful protests being broken up by violent state actors? Those can't be good for mental health

Or sending billions of dollars in weapons/bombs to Israel A holocaust in the middle east one after another. and I second everything you've said tbh. America has done more to harm mental health than social media has and that's saying a lot because social media spits out missinfo stuff 24/7.

Poverty also negatively impacts teenagers mental health.

Not anymore than living in the US does

I’m a dude in my 50’s and I think the issue is less with social media than the shitty world we’ve made for kids. Environmental collapse, school shootings, police brutality, cratering institutions, bigotry, and a predatory economy would give anyone trauma.

Yes. The problem often seems to be adults assuming that the only reason that young people are refusing to go along with all of this is that some external force has corrupted them.

ah but you see if kids don’t have access to social media they become far less aware of these things bc the normal media outlets sanitize the reports. This is exactly why TikTok is being targeted in the states.

Warning label like a pack of cigs showing a brain scan of posters madness.

Difficult to argue with it. It’s infected millions of adults and now a generation of young people are infected.

Social media isn't the cause of our problems. It has just made them a lot harder to ignore.

Social media has actually literally changed the way our brains work, there's a ton of studies on this. That's one of the reasons I say that kids should have a different version all together. Our attention span particular is affected and while the brain is developing that's a HUGE deal.

Johann Hari is a bullshit artist.

Some excellent posts here.

The developmental stage is a big deal. Maybe develop some sort of restriction on apps until 18. But that would be common sense, which isn’t that common.

I believe most of the people who seem peeved about this are probably younger themselves. I honestly think that people that are under 18 should probably have to have separated social media spaces then those over it, with exception for parents to monitor under a certain age.

Not too hard to argue with. www.techdirt.com/2023/12/18/y...

Yet Another Massive Study Says There’s No Evidence That Social Media Is Inherently Harmful To Teenswww.techdirt.com At this point, I really have to question the seriousness of anyone who claims that the evidence shows that social media is bad for kids. We’re now reaching a point where the research is increasingl…

If they cannot put their phones down, if they go through withdrawal if their phones are taken away, how is this different from an addictive drug?

[citations needed]

This entire country needs a warning label for kids.

How exactly would something like this work, FFS? Will every site now require an age verification blocker? What about offshore sites? This is a parenting issue, not a matter for Congress IMO.

WARNING: The Surgeon General has determined that social media smoking may be hazardous to your health

Lowtax had a label on his website going back I'm assuming to when he started it 25 years ago, it's amazing how no one else put The Internet Makes You Stupid on their sites

Should include everyone’s mental health lol.

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