Health Hazards of Social Media for Adolescents – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #990

Health Hazards of Social Media for Adolescents – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #990

Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #990 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here.

Credit: Mary Taylor

Credit: Jessica Ticozzelli

Credit: Budgeron Bach

Credit: Andrea Piacquadio

This Blog Post is mainly based on an interview with US Surgeon General, published in Journal of American Medicine Association – JAMA on August 9, 2024. Link at the end.

The Surgeon General of the United States is the operational head of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and thus the leading spokesperson on matters of public health in the federal government of the United States. The Office of Surgeon General periodically issues health warnings, the best-known example of which is warning label that has been present on all packages of American cigarettes since 1966.

In June 2024, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wrote an opinion piece for New York Times in which he proposed that warning labels should be put on social media. 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 health harms for adolescents. Such a warning would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proven safe”. 

Excerpts from Interview by JAMA Editor-in-Chief of Surgeon General

One of the first issues I started hearing about during my second term as Surgeon General was about social media. This was coming from parents in particular. The most common question they were asking me was, “Is social media safe for my kids?” And it wasn’t because of how it was impacting their sleep and their learning. They were seeing how it impacted their [kids’] self-esteem.

They were seeing at times their kids bullied and harassed online and they were wondering, “Are you sure this is okay?” At the same time, parents would often say to me, “If it’s out there and if it’s free and available for my kids to use, it must be safe, right? Somebody must have checked it out and made sure it was okay?”

In the data, we were seeing an association between social media use and youth mental health harms. It certainly looks like it is greater among girls than boys, for example. What we were also seeing were data points that told us, for example, that adolescents using social media 3 hours or more a day was associated with a doubling of risk of anxiety and depression symptoms.

But what was also interesting was data that was coming from young people themselves. Nearly half of adolescents were saying on surveys that social media use made them feel worse about their body image. A third of adolescents were saying they felt addicted to social media. A third were saying that they were staying up past midnight or later, on school nights, and using their devices, and much of that was social media use.

And then finally you think about the case studies, hundreds of circumstances, if not more, where parents have reported that after being bullied on social media or harassed or exploited or extorted, their child engaged in self-harm and in some cases took their own lives. These are circumstances that should never happen. 

The thing that I find stunning and extremely disturbing is, why is it that of all the various things kids use—medications, car seats, cars when they get older, food—we have been largely negligent in acknowledging the harms of social media that are being reported day in and day out by parents and by kids themselves. We have responded with very little in the way of investigations, regulations, safety standards. 

The warning label is important, not as a solution to make social media safer, because it doesn’t do that, but as a warning to help parents and kids understand what we are seeing increasingly in the data: that there isn’t clear evidence of safety and that there is a growing association between social media use and youth mental health harms.

One of the most important things you can do as a first step is to start having open conversations with them about social media’s impact on their health and well-being. A lot of times our kids have great insights into how social media is making them feel, but they may not be expressing that to you. They also may not know when to raise a flag and say, “Hey, something is wrong here.” But we want our kids to know that if they’re approached by strangers in ways that make them feel uncomfortable—as 6 out of 10 adolescent girls feel on social media—and certainly if people are trying to bully or extort them or exploit them, that’s an important time to raise a flag and to tell a parent.

The second thing that’s really important for us to do with our kids is to think about the timing of when we introduce social media into their lives. Now, I wish I could tell you there was an RCT [randomized clinical trial] out there that tested all the different ages and told us the best stage. That doesn’t exist. And we also know that kids differ in terms of their level of maturity and when they may be ready.

Here is what I recommend to parents. Number one is to wait until after middle school to consider using social media or giving your kid a social media account. The reason for this is because adolescence, early adolescence in particular, is a unique phase of development where we know that children are more prone to being affected by social suggestion and social comparison, and where their impulse control isn’t as fully developed. We want to protect them during that time. I will say, this is not easy, right? It’s very easy for me to say this, but what if you’re the parent whose child is coming up to you and saying, “Everybody else has a social media account. Do you want me to be alone and left out? I need to have one, too.”

That’s a very, very difficult circumstance to be in, which is why the other thing I recommend parents do is to actually talk to other parents and build partnerships around how to manage social media. If a few families are all waiting until after middle school, that makes it a lot easier for you as a parent, but also your kid knows that they’re not alone.

One last thing I’d recommend: if your child is already on social media, consider creating tech-free zones in their days to protect sleep, in-person interaction, and physical activity. One of the things I worry about with children is that social media use is robbing them of those critical areas that they need for healthy development. On average right now, adolescents are using social media for 4.8 hours a day. That’s not all screentime; that is just social media—4.8 hours a day. 

Sum Up

Social media is playing havoc with our youth particularly, because they are mostly less educated and uninformed. Their parents are also usually uninformed or oblivious to what their kids are doing. The youth is generally frustrated and therefore, get into doing the unwanted things very quickly. Our authorities should curb misuse of social media not just for political reasons, but for social reasons. 

Concluded.

Disclaimers: Pictures in these blogs are taken from free resources at Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and Google. Credit is given where available. If a copyright claim is lodged, we shall remove the picture with appropriate regrets.

For most blogs, I research from several sources which are open to public. Their links are mentioned under references. There is no intent to infringe upon anyone’s copyrights. If, however, it happens unintentionally, I offer my sincere regrets. 

References:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2822304