Should social media have a warning label?

Understanding the surgeon general's call for warning labels on social media platforms

Jun 18, 2024

Welcome to Techno Sapiens! I’m Jacqueline Nesi, a psychologist and professor at Brown University, co-founder of Tech Without Stress (@techwithoutstress), and mom of two young kids.

Hi sapiens! We’ve got a rare Tuesday post this week, given yesterday’s news from the surgeon general. We’ll be back to our regularly-scheduled programming next week!

5 min read

Yesterday, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for warning labels to be added to social media platforms, similar to those on tobacco and alcohol products. In a New York Times op-ed, he wrote:

It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents. A surgeon general’s warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe.

Is this a good idea? Let’s discuss.

The bottom line

The potential efficacy of such a “warning label” really depends on the specifics. What exactly would it say? How and when would it be shown to parents (and kids)?

We need to approach this carefully—if not done well, this type of warning could cause more harm.

I agree that we cannot wait for perfect information to act. There are steps we should take to protect kids online, and Dr. Murthy outlines many of them in his op-ed. A warning label will never be enough.

What could possibly be harmful about a warning label?

When it comes to youth mental health, the sentiment is often “something is better than nothing.” If we’re doing something—running a mental health awareness campaign, teaching a certain therapy skill in schools—surely this must be a good thing, whatever it looks like.

Increasingly, we’re learning that this is not true.

It turns out that the specifics really matter. Some mental health awareness campaigns are great! Others might actually contribute to a rise in mental health symptoms. Some school-based treatment programs are incredibly effective. Others seem to make mental health problems worse.

Interventions might inadvertently draw youth’s attention to problems in their lives, but offer too little support to fix them. Or they might cause “overinterpretation,” whereby youth start to perceive normal negative emotions as mental health problems, and then act in ways that actually create those problems. The details—who our interventions target, and how, exactly, they do so—make all the difference.

Now, onto the “intervention” at hand. Let’s imagine a warning label is added to all social media platforms, and it states, as the surgeon general suggests:

Social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.

What could go wrong?

Let’s start with the issue of accuracy. To be clear: there are many problems with social media. There are absolutely ways in which the use of social media might undermine mental health—if kids are encountering highly problematic content, for example, or if they’re using it so much that it’s getting in the way of other aspects of their lives. But if you take an average, perfectly healthy child and expose them to social media, will it cause them to develop a mental health problem? In the vast majority of cases: no. (For more on this, see this post and this post).

A parent who reads the label above is unlikely to reach that nuanced conclusion.

In fact, I worry that this type of oversimplified messaging could backfire. What happens when a parent is bombarded with warnings about how bad social media is for their teen’s mental health, but given no tools to address it? What happens when every time a teen logs into Snapchat to message a friend, they’re told it’s causing them significant mental health problems? Does this “awareness” inadvertently create a self-fulfilling prophecy? We’ve certainly seen cases where warning labels, such as “disclaimers” added to media images depicting retouched or ultra-thin models, actually worsen the issues (e.g., body image) they’re trying to address. I think we run that same risk here.

You, always with the cars…

Let’s return to my favorite analogy for thinking about issues surrounding youth and social media: cars. Cars can be incredibly dangerous! There’s a reason we don’t let kids drive them until a certain age, and even then, put all sorts of safety measures in place.

Now, let’s imagine every time you got into a car, you got a warning saying “This car might crash and kill you.” This would certainly raise your awareness that cars are dangerous. It would scare you. But would it change your behavior? Now, let’s say you added an “action” to the end: “This car might crash and kill you…but putting on your seatbelt right now will reduce the risk of death by 500%.”

It’s long been known that fear-based public health messaging cannot simply describe a threat—it also needs to recommend an action to be effective. First you learn what could go wrong, then you learn what to do to avoid it.

So, will warning parents that social media use “is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents” actually change their behavior? Will it lead to them more effectively limiting, monitoring, and/or managing their kids’ social media use?

I think parents need more.

In his op-ed, Dr. Murthy cites a recent survey of Latino parents asking their views on social media and kids. When this survey asked parents whether they “already [knew] about the harm that social media can cause for the mental health and wellbeing of children” before taking the survey, 80% said they did.

This suggests the problem is not lack of awareness. Two-thirds of parents nationally report that social media is their number one concern. Most parents know that social media can be bad, and many are concerned about it. The problem, I think, is a lack of knowledge of how to limit it, or monitor it, or generally navigate it with their kids—plus a lack of cooperation on the part of legislators and tech companies to make it easier.

Where do we go from here?

If we can develop a warning label that is accurate, nuanced, and offers a clear course of action for parents and youth, I see no problem with it. But when it comes to making social media safer, our efforts might better be spent elsewhere.

In his op-ed, Dr. Murthy lays out a number of recommendations, including legislation that shields kids from online harassment and exposure to extreme violence, companies sharing data on health effects with scientists, schools creating phone-free spaces, and doctors working with kids and parents to guide them toward safer social media practices. Dr. Murthy himself notes that, more than warning labels, these recommendations “remain the priority.”

I’ve seen various arguments for a social media warning label, but many have a general undercurrent of, simply, “why not?” It will be a wake-up call, they argue. It will be easier to get through congress than other measures. It’s at least something. But let’s remember: something isn’t always better than nothing. The something really matters.