When U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy announced plans Monday to push for social media platforms to include mental health warning labels, he was cheered by many parents and teachers who described the long, lonely struggle to wean their children off damaging habits.
But scientists who study the relationship between social media and mental health were more sober. In interviews, several researchers said Dr. Murthy's blanket warning that social media causes significant harm to adolescent mental health stretches and oversimplifies the scientific evidence.
Researchers have tried for years to find out whether the amount of time kids spend on social media affects poor mental health, but “the results have been very mixed, and the consensus is that there's probably no association,” said Dr. Mitch Prinstein, chief science officer at the American Psychological Association.
He says what's more important seems to be what they're doing online: Self-harm content, for example, has been shown to increase self-harm behavior.
“That's like saying, 'Are calories good or bad for you?'” said Dr. Prinstein, who testified on the subject before the Senate last year. “It depends. Sweets or vegetables? If your child is following the New York Times feed on social media all day and talking about it with their friends, that's probably fine.”
Like other scientists interviewed, Dr. Prinstein praised Dr. Mursi for drawing attention to the mental health crisis. He said he was very optimistic that policy changes could be made in the future to ensure that social media use does not interfere with school, sleep, and physical activity. Following Dr. Mursi's announcement, California Governor Gavin Newsom called for a statewide ban on smartphone use in California schools.
“What's going on right now, and I think the Surgeon General captures it well, is parents are feeling incredibly powerless,” Dr. Prinstein said. “He's giving everyone in this conversation ammunition to say, 'Look, no matter how angry my kid is with me, if the Surgeon General says this may be harmful, then I feel justified in taking the device away at 9 p.m.'”
In an essay arguing for warning labels published Monday in The New York Times, Dr. Murthy relied on anecdotes rather than scientific research, citing a 2019 study that found adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media have double the risk of anxiety and depression.
Dr Murthy is quick to respond to academic criticism: Children growing up today “cannot afford to wait years for the full impact of social media to become clear,” he says. When asked about the evidence of social media's harmful effects, he argues that “there is not enough evidence to conclude that social media is sufficiently safe.”
“Until social media is actually safe, warning labels are important,” he said in an interview.
In interviews, several researchers said the proposed warnings are too broad and could be counterproductive.
“These warnings are typically directed at products that have no safe usage levels or that cause harm if used as intended by the manufacturer,” 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, and the scientific evidence does not support the notion that social media, per se, is dangerous.”
Rather, he said, it's a “situation where good and bad can happen.”
Even before Murthy's publication, many researchers had challenged the widely accepted link between social media and the mental health crisis. The debate intensified after New York University Business School professor Jonathan Haidt published “The Anxious Generation” in March, arguing that the rise of social media is contributing to an “epidemic of mental illness.”
The book, which spent 11 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, was panned in Nature magazine by Candace L. Odgers, a professor of psychological information sciences at the University of California, Irvine. “Hundreds of researchers, including myself, have looked for the kind of large effect Haidt suggests,” Odgers wrote. “Our efforts have yielded a mix of no associations, small associations, or mixed associations.”
Dr. Odgers has been approached by numerous journalists and has circulated a six-page summary of the scientific literature on the subject. He has catalogued large meta-analyses and reviews that have found that social media use has only modest effects on health, including a 2023 report by an expert committee convened by the National Academy of Sciences.
Following Dr Murthy's call on Monday for warning labels to be put in place, Dr Odgers said the country's top health official risked labelling normal adolescent behaviour as “shameful, harmful and dangerous”, which could lead to conflict within families and cause young people to be excluded from places where they can find support.
Meanwhile, “the real causes of youth mental health issues remain unaddressed,” she said.
“I understand that the government and the surgeon general want to regulate social media companies,” she said, “and they think there's room to do that here, but it will come at a cost and children and families will pay the price.”
Haidt and his occasional collaborator, psychologist Jean Twenge, argue there's plenty of evidence that more social media use leads to worse mental health, and point out that young people themselves often cite social media as a major source of stress.
Dr. Twenge, author of “Generations: The Real Difference Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Baby Boomers, and the Silent Generation, and What It Means for America's Future,” said the disconnect could be due to the way research psychologists are trained to analyze statistical correlations, which often lead them to dismiss them as small.
Public health colleagues might also look at the same data and see unacceptable risks that require action. For them, she says, not acting might be the riskier choice. “What are the risks of reducing the amount of time teens and children spend on social media?” she says. “If we're wrong, the consequences of taking action are minimal. If we're right, the consequences of doing nothing are enormous.”
