42 Attorneys General Are Calling on Surgeon General To Place Warnings for Social Media
Jose Nino
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42 United States attorneys general signaled that they would back adding warning labels to social media platforms that are similar to those on cigarette boxes.
The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) sent an open letter to lawmakers where they said the warning could help tackle a growing mental health crisis that they believe has been caused by social media applications.
“All of us share an abiding concern for the safety of the kids in our jurisdictions—and algorithm-driven social media platforms threaten that safety,” the letter highlighted.
The letter supports a recommendation by Vivek Murthy, the US’s surgeon general, back in June to slap such a warning label on social media platforms.
He made the case in a New York Times opinion piece that a surgeon general’s warning would “remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe”.
A 2019 study published in JAMA Psychiatry, which studied 6,500 American teens, discovered that individuals who spent over three hours daily on social media run a higher risk of developing mental health issues than their counterparts.
A 2023 Gallup poll found that American teens spend an average of 4.8 hours on social media on a daily basis.
In 2023, the NAAG and the New York Attorney General filed a federal lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Facebook, for allegedly causing harm to young people’s mental health, per a press release.
The lawsuit claims that the company “designed and deployed harmful features on Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms that … addict children and teens.”
The open letter argues that the warning on social media platforms doesn’t go far enough by itself but would “complement” other actions for increased oversight.
Red states should start regulating social media companies and punishing them for their addictive nature and also their willingness to engage in censorship. However, the federal government can’t be trusted to regulate such entities due to the makeup of the present ruling class.
In all likelihood, such efforts would be misdirected into censorship schemes exclusively focused on the Right.
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