Social Media Is Harming The ‘Well-Being Of Our Children’

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In a conversation with TIME, Murthy discusses how parents, policy makers, researchers, and technology companies can and should come together to make social media platforms safer for children. (This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.)

Since becoming Surgeon General, I have focused primarily on mental health and well-being, which I see as the defining public health crisis of our time.

And youth are a point of concern. As I traveled around the country and talked to families about mental-health concerns, the No. 1 question I get from parents is about social media: “Is social media safe for my kids?” And many kids raise the same concerns. At roundtables I’ve had with middle-school students, high-school students, and college students, they often proactively bring up social media.

The three things they have told me most consistently are: 1. That social media of- ten made them feel worse about themselves; 2. That it made them feel worse about their friendships; and 3. That they couldn’t get off of it. As one student told me, “I feel great during the day, then take out my phone and get on social media and see all of these people doing things without me, or accomplishing incredible things—having incredible bodies and living incredible lives—and suddenly I feel worse about myself.” It’s a common theme.

The reason I issued the advisory is to answer the question that so many parents have been posing to me about social media.

What does your report conclude about social media and youth mental health?

After putting together the available data, which involved going through publicly available research and looking at published data as well as consulting independent experts, our conclusions are, first, that there isn’t enough data to say that social media platforms are safe for kids, and, second, that there is growing evidence that social media use is associated with harms.

Do policy makers and technology companies have a responsibility to ensure that their platforms are safe for children?

I 100% see this as a responsibility for policy makers and technology companies. Any company that produces a product consumed by kids has a fundamental responsibility to ensure it is safe for children—that it helps and not harms them.

We don’t ask parents to inspect the brakes on cars that children will ride in, or the ingredients in medications that children use, or ask them to conduct chemical analyses of the paint used in toys made for children to make sure that they are safe. We set standards and enforce them—that’s usually done by government—to make sure that manufacturers meet them.

That’s what is missing here. We can’t have technology companies set their own standards; we don’t do that in any other sectors where kids’ well-being is at stake. But that’s largely what has been happening over the past 20 years.

What are some specific standards that policy