Drew Angerer\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Similar labels on tobacco, first instituted in 1965, led to a steady decline in cigarette smoking in America over the past several decades. <\/p>\n
Congress has long chastised social media companies, claiming they pose harm to children. CEOs of tech companies have been grilled routinely on Capitol Hill, most notably Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg \u2014 who publicly apologized to families whose children killed themselves because of online bullying and harassment. But Congress has taken little action to curb children\u2019s social media usage. <\/p>\n
Murthy argued that it\u2019s time for Congress to get serious about curbing children\u2019s use of social media. <\/p>\n
Murthy has warned about social media\u2019s harm to children\u2019s welfare for years. But Monday\u2019s declaration of an emergency and his appeal to Congress represent his most urgent call to action on the issue so far. <\/p>\n
In May 2023, Murthy issued an advisory that said there\u2019s not enough evidence to determine whether social media is safe enough for children and adolescents\u2019 mental health, saying social media use presents \u201ca profound risk of harm\u201d for kids. <\/p>\n
He suggested parents restrict their kids\u2019 social media use, saying 13 is too young to join social apps. But such advisories are designed to call attention to urgent public health \u2013 they don\u2019t require action. <\/p>\n
A warning label, if Congress passes legislation requiring one, would be insufficient to fix the problem, Murthy acknowledged. <\/p>\n
He suggested schools become phone-free environments for children, as should dinner time and other family events. And Murthy urged parents to restrict children\u2019s use of social media until they graduate from middle school. <\/p>\n
Several states have worked to pass legislation to increase the age at which children can begin to use social apps or some of their more time-sucking features, such as algorithms that push people to engage with more content within the app. The bills have been largely bipartisan. <\/p>\n
Florida\u2019s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in March signed a bill that would prohibit children under 14 from obtaining their own social media accounts, and children under 16 would need parental consent to have accounts. New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul said she would sign legislation passed by the state legislature that would ban social media from using algorithms in children\u2019s feeds, and the bill would also prevent tech companies from sharing information of children under 18. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is much easier said than done, which is why parents should work together with other families to establish shared rules, so no parents have to struggle alone or feel guilty when their teens say they are the only one who has to endure limits,\u201d Murthy wrote in the New York Times. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re talking about the mental health and wellbeing of kids,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said the threat social media poses to children requires urgent action, and he demanded Congress to put a label on the apps as it does with cigarettes and alcohol. \u201cThe mental health crisis among young people is an emergency \u2014 and social media has emerged as an important contributor,\u201d Murthy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1144,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":538,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}