In Iowa, U.S. surgeon general calls on Congress to protect kids from social media

DES MOINES — Americans have grown increasingly lonely and it’s hurting their mental health, said U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy.

Those grappling with social isolation face increased risk for anxiety, depression and suicide, and can lead to higher risk for conditions like heart disease or dementia.

Murthy has made mental health a priority, issuing public health advisories on social isolation and loneliness and social media’s effect on the well-being of youth. He has called for action in the face of declining youth mental health — urging technology companies, researchers, families and young people to gain a better understanding of the full impact of social media use and create safer, healthier online environments.

Murthy has said the youth mental health crisis is the “defining public health issue of our time” and called on Congress to put in place safety standards to minimize the harms of social media platforms on children.

Murthy spoke about the issue during the 2024 Harkin on Wellness Symposium at Drake University in Des Moines on Wednesday.

“The most common question parents were asking me was is social media safe for my kids?,” Murthy said during a fireside chat with former Des Moines Register columnist Rekha Basu.

“When we dug into the data around that, it became very clear that there was not enough evidence to say that social media was safer,” Murthy said. “And by contrast, there is in fact growing evidence that was telling us that there may in fact be harm associated with social media use,” from exposing youth to violent and sexual content, to bullying and harassment, to perpetuating body dissatisfaction and low self-esteem.

Young people, he said, have told him social media has made them feel worse about themselves, because they’re constantly comparing themselves to others.

“But, it also often has made them feel worse about their friendships, because they constantly see people doing things without them,” Murthy said speaking to reporters after his keynote address.

He cited research showing that adolescents who spend more than three hours daily on social media face double the risk of experiencing depression and anxiety. U.S. teens currently spend an average of nearly five hours on social media, according to a 2023 Gallup survey.

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Murthy reiterated his call for Congress to put in place safety standards to protect teens’ exposure to harmful content and manipulative features that seek to lure users into excessive use of their platforms. Murthy has also called for companies to disclose their data on the health impacts of their platform.

“What has happened is that the platforms themselves are designed to maximize how much time people spend on them … which generates advertising dollars and falls to the bottom line,” he said. “And so you have the best product engineers in the world … spending a lot of time energy and expertise figuring out how to keep us online and keep us on that platform. And then you take an adolescent who's going through a critical phase of brain development, when their impulse control is not fully developed. When they are especially sensitive to social suggestions.

“What’s happening is the platforms are effectively preying on those vulnerabilities that our children have.”

Surgeon general calls for ‘actual safety standards’ across US

Murthy said he believes there needs to be a uniform federal standard established by elected officials across the country, to ensure companies abide by these safety standards across the board.

“Up until now, we essentially have said the burden of managing harms of social media are on kids and parents,” Murthy said during the symposium.

“We have done a real disservice to kids and parents by not putting in place actual safety standards,” he said, calling it an “utter failure of responsibility” and “abdication of our most sacred responsibility as a society, which is to take care of our children.”

State lawmakers this year and last have debated various bills restricting teen access to social media. Federal lawmakers also have introduced various proposals to install safeguards for kids’ use of social media, including requiring social media companies to verify the age of users.

Social media companies contend they already provide tools and practices, such as screen-time management, to help young people and parents moderate how long children spend on their platform and what they see.

"I certainly appreciate that they’re taking some steps, but what I want to know as a parent first and foremost, as well as a doctor and surgeon general, where is the proof those steps have worked to make the platform safe for our children?“ Murthy said. ”We have not seen that proof yet.“

Pandemic exacerbated mental health concerns

Mental health was a concern even before the pandemic, when the surgeon general's office found a 57 percent increase in suicide rate among young people in the decade prior.

At that time, nearly one in three high school girls had seriously considered taking their own life. In addition, nearly half of high school students were feeling persistently hopeless and sad.

And since COVID-19, that situation has become even more dire, with social media being a major driver, Murthy said.

“The pandemic turned our lives upside down in so many ways, but one of the things it also did is it isolated people from each other,” he said. “And for many young people that happened at a critical time of their social development. The pandemic made them age backward in terms of their social skills.”

Schools, states can address mental health issue

Murthy said school officials can help address the issue by having conversations with students about mental health and bolstering resources, such as school counselors, as much as possible to provide mental health support and care, and ensuring “they have pathways to refer students” to providers.

He also said schools should implement phone-free zones, and help foster more in-person interactions among peers during the school day.

Murthy also encouraged states, including Iowa, to invest in telehealth to expand access to mental care, particularly in rural areas, and expand and continue to invest in infrastructure for 988 — the three-digit hotline for people who are in a mental health crisis.

“We’ve got to help support the mental health of young people by making sure they have access to mental health providers, and making sure we’re also addressing the root causes of what’s driving so many of these mental health concerns, including the challenge of social media and how it has unfortunately become an unsafe place for many of our children,” he said.

Lurking the shadows, he told reporters, is a parents’ mental health crisis, where rates of depression and anxiety are similar to what they are among kids today.

“And those have to do with how hard it is for many of them to raise children today with some of the economic challenges that families are facing today,” Murthy said. “And this is a place not only where government has a role to play in stepping up and supporting families, but where I think all of us as a society have to recognize there are people in our neighborhoods who are struggling right now, today.

“This a time where we need to come together and support one another.”

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