US Surgeon General Presses for Warning Label on Social Media

The US Surgeon General on Monday called for adding a formal warning label on social media sites akin to those placed on cigarette cartons, warning parents that TikTok, Instagram and other platforms can harm kids’ mental health.

“A surgeon general’s warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe,” Vivek Murthy wrote in a Monday editorial in the New York Times.

The US’s top health official, who issued a 19-page advisory on the subject last year, would still need Congress to pass any sort of measure.

No legislation on the label has been introduced in Washington. But lawmakers have been pushing for more safety controls over social media. “These companies must be reined in, or the worst is yet to come,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said during a January congressional hearing that lambasted the chief executives of Meta Platforms Inc., Snap Inc., TikTok and Elon Musk’s X platform over their “failure” to protect kids online from sexual predators and content that could damage their mental health.

In Monday’s opinion column, Murthy cited research that adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms, with average daily use in this age group at 4.8 hours. He said evidence from tobacco studies show that warning labels can help change behavior.

Read More: Meta, X, TikTok CEOs Ripped by Senators Over Child Safety

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Shelly Banjo in New York at sbanjo@bloomberg.net

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Brian Bremner at bbremner@bloomberg.net

John Lauerman

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