91 Comments

Do any of you trapped in your philosophical bubbles have Gen Z children? Haidt is 100% correct. His research is compelling on a fundamental level. Getting phones out of schools will be a tremendous win. The Surgeon General weighing in on this is HUGE. Every little bit of societal support against social media for youth helps move the needle in the right direction. So thankful for the work he is doing. Go watch the recent senate hearings where these CEOs were questioned in the face of overwhelming evidence — often research from their own companies they chose to ignore. The comparison to car safety measures, food recalls, etc. in the name of public health is right. Yet for some reason we can’t agree on the importance of MENTAL HEALTH and the right ways to alleviate negative impacts.

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Yeah, I’m reading the comments on here and I’m a bit baffled that people are acting as if it’s the beginning of a totalitarian state. Lots of hyperbole being espoused. Glad the surgeon general weighed in and agrees with Haidt and Co.

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100%!!!! YES! 👏👏👏 I have four Gen Z kids, ages 12-20, and we have not allowed social media until 17 (even my current 17yo doesn’t want it because he sees what it does to his friends). When my oldest was 17, she suddenly started to experience depression and insecurity, where before she’d been confident and just focused. The social media app she’d gotten? Pinterest, for crying out loud. But she started getting ads and articles for depression, anxiety, and self-harm after doing a research project on anxiety for school. This impacted her health profoundly, started an episode of self harm that was quickly addressed. She’s doing well now but 100% blames this on the influence of even a more benign social platform like Pinterest, which still has algorithms. She had a more mature brain, and is highly disciplined as a person. ALL of my kids have struggled to connect with peers and cousins who are constantly on their phones. All of their peers have some level of anxiety and talk nonstop about social media even when their phones are locked up at their phone-free school.

Get your heads out of the sand, friends. Regulation is an absolutely essential step because these companies do NOT care what they are doing to kids. Regulation will make parenting a thousand times easier. I do not worry about my kids smoking cigarettes because of the culture surrounding tobacco, thanks in large part to regulations making it harder and less socially-acceptable. Let’s do the same with social media and smart phone use.

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oh luckily another reasonable person on here! I'm reading this and I'm thinking "that's amazing progress" and also feel personally motivated to start reducing my social media use. But the comments on here are .... interesting!

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After the past 4 years, I would prefer that govt do nothing. Especially public health. As parents, there are ways to tackle this issue on a local level.

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Agree 100% - they always have an ulterior motive, which ultimately equals control.

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What's the ulterior motive here?

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Total surveillance state and harvesting of human emotional energy to generate capital. What do you think?

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This is Trump's plan in a nutshell. Subjugate the populace by a dictatorial govt. He's already laid it out.

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Yep - glad you're awake. Why do you think so many others still follow him? Do they hate the other side more than they love Trump?

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Control

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Do nothing, Molly? What about a mandate to end mandates, rather than the first Amendment?

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Our Constitution has it covered. Do not comply

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We are only two justices away .... :'(

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Our Constitution brought the monster to life.

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Like what would you suggest locally that would actually move the needle on this? I’m curious how a local movement could possibly address the scope and scale of this issue.

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No phones in school. Educate through local organizations such as “operation parent” about the harms & encourage parents to postpone allowing social media. We did this in my home, & it was not difficult. Engage young people in the effort.

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No phones in school….how do we accomplish that? You make it sound easy

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That is why Patrick Henry opposed the Constitution.

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Why?

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Because it provided the means to undermine the Declaration of Independence, as it has.

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Could you elaborate, please?

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You can do that by yourself by reading it.

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What it, Vonu? Link please?

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Oof, the number of commenters here who are suffering from so much post-covid trauma they can't celebrate this win...

It seems that a lot of people went through 2020 and now believe the government:

- should never take public health measures, they're always bad

Meanwhile, my takeaway from 2020-2022 was that the government:

- should listen to all sides of public health research

- should take small measures first, while constantly evaluating both positive and negative side effects

- should bring attention to problems in ways that empower people to protect themselves without removing personal agency

- should restrict draconian tech CEOs and the harmful effects of their addictive, propagandistic media

A big congratulations to Dr. Murthy for utilizing his seat of power to take needed, sensible action!

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Such a reasonable and rational response. Thank you! I agree.

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I feel a bit nervous about the "don't wait for certainty" argument as it led to lockdowns and other draconian measures that officials seemed loathe to study to see if they were working and to end. I realize this is a different circumstance and there really isn't any huge downside to restricting social media use amongst youth, but I am concerned to hear government health-related bodies getting too comfortable with taking extreme measures without certainty.

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Yes, 100%

IMHO, public health has lost all credibility, even if this is the correct path on social media

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“ I realize this is a different circumstance and there really isn't any huge downside to restricting social media use amongst youth, …”

“Isn’t huge downside “ unless, of course, the goal is to murder the First Amendment. You are right, turning USA into the USSR or China isn’t huge downside.

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Could you consider that perhaps these tech giants are actually functioning more like the totalitarian regimes mentioned? You’re kidding yourself if you don’t think a massive amount of control and brainwashing isn’t happening- and Haidt’s research points to this. Could it be that putting up reasonable regulations and guard rails would actually support the first amendment? Where is the choice in being controlled by algorithms? Let’s think more broadly and deeply about the scope of the problem rather than jumping to a simplistic response.

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"Let’s think more broadly and deeply about the scope of the problem rather than jumping to a simplistic response."

Interesting! Speaking about simplistic response. Let's think, shall we?

In the ideal world, I would agree with you. Perhaps you are living in the ideal world. The rest of us ..... are not even dreaming about it no more.

You expect Democrats, who are using tech, as a lap dog, to their advantage or Republicans who are running around like chickens without heads to impose "reasonable regulations and guard rails"? Really?

As to "thinking broadly" point me to regulation and/or guard rail which you consider "reasonable" and I'll show you injustice to the ordinary taxpayers.

As a worldwide famous Soviet/Ukrainian soccer coach liked to point out: "Think!" and after a pause adding: "if you can"

Tip: (re)Read Orwell.

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Many young people today want this, desperately. I am shocked at the fascist mindset so many young people profess. They want something even more totalitarian than the People's Republic of China.

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Good point

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👆THIS!

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A warning is not an “extreme” measure.

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I'm concerned about the statement of the reasoning ("that in an emergency, you don’t have the luxury to wait for perfect information") and its potential misuse in circumstances like the pandemic. It's true that a warning is not extreme, but this administration has not yet seem to have admitted that what they did during the pandemic, using this reasoning, was extreme, and haven't proposed ways of preventing or quickly correcting for something like that going forward.

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Warning labels on governments.

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This is a great start to addressing a problem impacting not only youth but all ages. Thank you for this comprehensive dive into this urgent warning.

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Gee, anything else you don't like that you want to label? And anything else you want government to judge for you?

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Now all history requires is a class action lawsuit against the social media companies for the harm they have caused, just like they did with big tobacco. I'm not in favor of this, but I'm cynical enough to think that this is the government's opening gambit to pry some cash out of the hands of some wealthy tech companies.

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agreed - and/or control the narrative, while ignoring the real pressing harm of radiofrequency radiation and blue light emitted by these devices.

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You are joking, right? What about the risks of women eating ice cream while menstruating or Gypsy's crossing bodies of water during evening hours?

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“ agreed - and/or control the narrative,…”

Remembering your homeland, don’t you, Roman? Why are you aiming to repeat it here? Pravda!!

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There can’t be a lawsuit. In 1997, with Section 230, the government made internet media companies exempt from liability, long before social media existed and before they started profiting from amplifying the content that is the most addictive.

The tobacco companies were also protected by hands off government behavior until it was disclosed that tobacco companies designed low tar cigarettes with more nicotine to be more addictive.

There’s a lot to learn from the tobacco case history.

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Obviously. The US legal industry is like what the mafia is to Italy or narco-terrorists to Latin America. They impose massive, pointless costs with no benefit. We need to reign them in. I think the first step is a hard cap on law school admissions. Every state gets two law schools, with fixed admissions, and we can start increasing the limit as needed (my guess is that it would take a generation to mop up all the excess lawyers who survive on ambulance chasing)).

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Jun 18
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“ top CBT scientist:

"...one of the most common causes of suicide-the therapist..."

~see the trick with this claim?~“

Trick? I would not brush off that statement this easy.

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“In this post, we want to support the Surgeon General by making two points:

In public health emergencies, we don’t wait for certainty

The empirical evidence backing up the Surgeon General is now very strong”

When the Founders set up the slow moving system, they did not carve out an exception for “public emergencies.” Why is that?

Should not we start with a warning labels on governments?

How do warning labels on cigarettes prevent smoking?

The data is clearly in. Let’s put warning labels on mandates.

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The Surgeon General deserves our attention. This is an important message that every citizen should take quite seriously. We have the internet, and we have social media. Few of us would desire to lose the benefits of working remotely, shopping in our pajamas instead of driving to a store, researching topics, communicating, learning; all the important uses of our tech. Social media stands alone in fostering a system that allows and encourages misbehavior such as bullying or predatory encounters between strangers, exposure to unwanted solicitations and exposure to “adult” information to children not ready for such themes. It subtracts the healthy and inserts the unachievable beauty standards and each individual who looks in a mirror now finds themselves unattractive and doubts their ability to attract and form bonds with others. Time spent on platforms is necessarily subtracted from face to face socialization and youth and young adults don’t know how to communicate effectively. It’s time we faced the fact that some aspects of the internet are absolutely helpful, and others are just a simulated slot machine loaded with dystopian images and messages that benefit very few at an enormous cost to the rest of humanity.

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We must not paint the "control" narrative with too wide a brush --we do need some limiting principle on preventing others/gov from controlling us. Otherwise, all laws and initiatives of any kind can be labeled as being about control only. But the absence of all control(s) is lawless anarchy.

Government, by it's essence and definition, governs. Governing at any level means ceding some control. To live together, we inherently and voluntarily do this.

Importantly, it's reductive, and not helpful, to assess that all initiatives are about control. At some point, laws are required to prevent predators from feeding on helpless prey and for people to live together in a society. If you want fewer laws, it requires fewer people. And while we could all elect to move to more sparse areas where fewer laws are needed, this doesn't help with the infiltration of harmful ideas when those ideas are spread anywhere at the speed of light. Local governance might not be enough.

This is all to say--I don't want gov't control, and prefer local gov to federal gov almost always...but I'm willing to hear ideas on how to prevent this mental health epidemic from spreading and don't know that local governments can do it.

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There is no doubt regulating kids' social media intake is necessary. The question is by whom is it regulated and how.

Ultimatley there are two main categories of choices: 1. Manage a situation to curate a desired outcome or set of possible outcomes, or 2. Just let anything happen.

As an analogy, at our houses we can do nothing to care for our yards, or we can tend to them with care and garden them. A messy, untended yard is full of plants and weeds and life, but it's not a garden. A garden is deliberate.

The same is true with our kids. Feeding them and taking care of their basic needs will give them what they need to survive, but for them to thrive requires constantly removing the weeds that grow, and working deligently to prevent potential infestation.

No infestation spreads as quickly or as virulently as ideas.

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One of this kids at my kindergarten wears glasses. He's 6 and about to go to primary school. He's smart, but he lacks social skills. Every few months his class teacher needs to have a conversation with him about his inappropriate behavior in class, for instance rolling his eyes when asked to be quiet. When he comes in, usually later than everyone, he's like a zombie. His mum told us he watches You-Tube.

I see parents spending quality time with their children, reading books with them on their commute to work. I also see parents and domestic helpers give their phones to the children in order to have a few moments of piece and quiet.

Children don't listen. They simply copy the adults around them. Are we adults behaving better around children?

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I agree that phones/social media are unhealthy. My concern is with using government regulations to stop kids/teens from using it. Societal issues are leading to kids having nothing else to do. Parents fear letting their kids go outside, walk to a friend’s house, or hold an after-school job. Most kids would spend less time on their phones if these were available.

We could also educate our young people about the dangers of social media. Millennials would be perfect mentors for this. Finally, let’s not forget who buys the phones and pays for the service! Parents can use the power of their wallets to prevent their children from having a phone. I would prefer that to government warnings or age limits on children's phone use.

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I think its important to remember that the parental fear is the real issue. Its not actually more dangerous out there nowadays. People just wrongly think it is, probably because of sensationalized media.

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Agree!

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First they should put a warming label on themselves.

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Amen

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I hope that Dr. Murthy also learned in med school that while seeking perfect information might be dangerous, so are certain treatments--and those treatments might require a higher confidence of data and diagnosis. For example, if my doctor tells me my foot is irreconcilably infected with gangrene and must be amputated, I want to be very, very sure that is the correct decision.

And I also hope Dr. Murthy, and all domain experts, learned in civics class (remember that?) that there are more dimensions to political decisions than a narrow specialist perspective. Simply declaring a health emergency does not give medical officials a mandate to take charge, despite the over-reach we saw during the Covid pandemic. Like it or not, eliminating all risk is not our fundamental national ethos. If we want even a vestigial free society, then activists have to work within the framework of liberty, even if that is harder.

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It's strange to me why you and so many others in these comments are worried about putting a warning label on social media as if its some massive affront to freedom.

But yes literally everyone knows that some treatments require a high degree of certainty before pursuing. This is why he isn't calling for a ban on social media for kids, just a warning label.

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Because, dear Moose, some of us believe the government should not be making value judgements and issuing official behavioral guidelines. You might agree with doing this for social media, but then be unhappy with the next subjective target.

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Then I guess it's just a values difference. I don't think that warning labels infringe on liberty enough to make me opposed to them in principle. The hypothetical of me disagreeing with a warning label actually already happened with the stupid California law that puts a cancer warning on everything, I just disagree with that specific law (way too broad) rather than all warning labels.

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I can't escape the idea that screen time is a symptom and not a cause. Where are the control populations in these studies? Where are there modern cultures that aren't saturated by social media and games?

My hypothesis is that general attitudes on sociopolitical states of affairs are at least as much contributing. Parents involved their kids in all kinds of things they aren't emotionally prepared to handle. Eg put this trash in the right bin or the world will burn. The neighbors are a**holes who voted for that guy and he's destroying our country. It say these words to those people or you are an XXist. Kids are not equipped to understand these concepts much less navigate them

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