Should social media carry a health warning?
A decade or so ago, when I decided to cut and paste health warnings onto the Facebook logo whenever I discussed the company in my classes and presentations, it was in response to the danger I believed the company, and in particular, its founder, posed due to a complete absence of morals or ethics. Little did I know at the time the prescience of this, and that others in positions of authority might eventually share my concerns.
And so it was that on Monday, the US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, published an op-ed in The New York Times calling for health warnings on social media similar to those carried by tobacco, alcohol, and other harmful consumer products.
Last year, the Surgeon General’s office released a report about social media and young people’s mental health, detailing their usage patterns — more than five hours a day — and the risks involved, including exposure to harmful content, anxiety, depression or suicide stemming from patterns of behavior such as bullying and body shaming. In a 2019 study, it was found that the proportion of young adults with suicidal thoughts or other suicide-related outcomes increased by 47% between 2008 and 2017, precisely when social media use among that age group skyrocketed.
It’s important to understand what this means. The express recognition of the danger of social networks for…
