Magid: Surgeon General’s Social Media Warning Label is a bad idea

Although I understand why Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy has called for a warning label on social media platforms, there are several reasons I think it’s a bad idea.To begin with, social media is vastly different from tobacco, alcohol and other substances that now have warning labels. If I had to compare it to other substances, I’d pick ice cream. It usually makes you feel good, but if you eat too much, you can feel sick, and it can contribute to obesity and other health problems.

The majority of young people have reported mostly positive experiences in social media, though it is true most have had some bad experiences and a few have experienced serious problems. But that can be said about nearly any technology, medicine or food.But my biggest concern is that a simple warning label might detract from the more important work of educating teens and parents about how to manage the risks associated with improper or excessive use of social media and other technologies.

The study authors concluded that “Generally, the youth in our sample feel pretty positive about the impact this use has on their well-being; however, many acknowledged that it interferes with sleep, time with family, and schoolwork, and social media was reported as contributing to worse body image. The report also pointed out that “teens in our study are quite savvy about ways to stay safe and maintain privacy online and that they seem to appreciate having boundaries placed on their screen use.

Of course there are problems with social media. Some teens do spend an unhealthy amount of time on these platforms or become sad when they see others seemingly looking better or having a better life than theirs, not realizing that how some people depict themselves online is more illusionary than real. Some teens fall for scams, including sextortion, but the vast majority don’t.

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