Researchers say the social media warning is too broad

When the American surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy announced on Monday that he was planning to push a mental health warning label on social media platforms, to cheers from many parents and teachers, who described a long and lonely struggle for him. lead children away from a habit that was hurting them.

However, he received a cooler reaction from some scientists who study the relationship between social media and mental health. In interviews, several researchers said that the general warning that Dr. Murthy’s proposed—“social media is associated with significant adolescent mental health impairments”—stretches and oversimplifies the scientific evidence.

For years, researchers have tried to determine whether the amount of time a child spends on social media has contributed to poor mental health, and “the results have been really mixed, with perhaps the consensus being that no, there’s no connection,” said Dr. Mitch Prinstein, chief science officer at the American Psychological Association.

What seems to matter most, he said, is what they’re doing when they’re online — for example, content about self-harm has been shown to increase self-injurious behavior.

“It’s like saying, ‘Is the number of calories you eat good for you or bad for you?'” said Dr. Prinstein, who testified before the Senate on the subject last year. “It depends. Is it candy, or is it vegetables? If your kid is spending all day on social media following The New York Times feed and talking about it with their friends, it’s probably good, you know?”

Like the other scientists interviewed, Dr. Prinstein applauded Dr. Murthy for drawing attention to the mental health crisis. He said he was very optimistic about policy changes that could follow, to keep social media use from interfering with school, sleep and physical activity. After the announcement of Dr. Murthy, Governor Gavin Newsom of California called for a statewide ban on the use of smartphones in California schools.

“What’s going on there, and what I think the surgeon general has tapped into so well, is that parents are feeling so helpless,” said Dr. Prinstein. “It’s giving everybody in this conversation some ammunition to say, ‘Look — I don’t care how upset my kid might be with me, if the surgeon general says it might be harmful, I feel justified in removing the device at 21′”

In his essay making the case for a warning label, published Monday in The New York Times, Dr. Murthy relied more on anecdotes than scientific research. He cited a 2019 study that found teenagers who spent more than three hours a day on social media faced double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms.

Dr. Murthy has ready answers for his academic critics. He says kids growing up now “don’t have the luxury of waiting years until we know the full extent of social media’s impact.” When challenged for evidence of the harmful effects of social media, he argues instead that “we don’t have enough evidence to conclude that social media is safe enough.”

“The warning label is important until we get to the point where social media is actually safe,” he said in an interview.

In interviews, some researchers said the proposed warning was too broad and could backfire.

“These advisories are usually reserved for products that do not have a safe level of use, or that cause harm when used exactly as the manufacturer intended,” said Nicholas B. Allen, director of the Center for Digital Mental Health at the University of Oregon. “This is not an accurate description of social media. The scientific evidence simply does not support a view that social media is inherently dangerous.”

Instead, he said, it is “a context where both good and bad things can happen.”

Even before the announcement of Dr. Murthy, a number of researchers were challenging the widely accepted link between social media and mental health crises. That debate intensified after the March publication of “The Anxious Generation,” by Jonathan Haidt, a professor at New York University’s business school, who argued that the proliferation of social media had led to “an epidemic of mental illness.”

The book, which has spent 11 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, was published in the journal Nature by Candice L. Odgers, a professor of psychological science in computer science at the University of California, Irvine. “Hundreds of researchers, including myself, have looked for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt,” she wrote. “Our efforts have produced a mixture of no, small and mixed associations.”

Dr. Odgers, who has been contacted by so many journalists that she is distributing a six-page review of the scientific literature on the subject, has cataloged meta-analyses and large-scale reviews that have found that social media use has small effects on health. . among them a 2023 report from an expert committee convened by the National Academies of Sciences.

On Monday, after the call of Dr. Murthy for a warning label, Dr. Odgers said the country’s top health official was risking labeling normal teenage behavior “disgraceful, harmful and dangerous”. This can lead to conflict within families and cause young people to close themselves off from spaces where they find support.

Meanwhile, she said, “the real causes of youth mental health problems remain unresolved.”

“I understand that the government and the surgeon general want to regulate social media companies,” she said. “And they see an opening to do that here, but there’s a cost, and kids and families are going to pay for it.”

Mr Haidt and his occasional collaborator, the psychologist Jean Twenge, say there is plenty of evidence that greater use of social media leads to poorer mental health, and they note that young people themselves often cite social media as the cause. main concern. .

Dr. Twenge, author of “Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents — and What They Mean for America’s Future,” said the disconnect may come down to how research psychologists are trained. to analyze statistical correlations, often dismissing them as small.

Their colleagues in public health can look at the same data and see an unacceptable risk that requires action. For them, not acting may be a riskier choice, she said. “What is the risk that teenagers and children spend less time on social media?” she said. “If we make a mistake, the consequences of our actions are small. If we are right, the consequences of doing nothing are great.”