US Surgeon General wants cigarette-style health warning labels on social networks US Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy today said official warning labels should be slapped on social media networks. In an op-ed for the New York Times, Dr Murthy warned that social media is a key factor in "the mental health crisis among young people." He proposed that a formal Surgeon General's warning label should be applied …
"Dr Murthy envisions this warning label being shown to parents and youngsters regularly, and that might be the trickier part. It's easy to slap a warning label on a box or bottle, but it's less straightforward on websites or apps, which is perhaps why the Surgeon General didn't share a particular method he would like to see."
It's not tricky. Simply use the same method that is already used for the "We use cookies to spy on you because we care, and want to make you richer, funnier, and better in bed" popups.
Anyone, anywhere, has been taking a good look at the effect that crap has on the mental health of adults as well?
And, generally speaking, if we conclusively find that something is bad for human kids, why would we just assume adults to be magically immune? We wouldn't do that for toxic substances, why the hell do we keep doing that for harmful psychological effects?
Adults are different for sure, maybe tougher (debatable, but okay), but to the point of not even bothering looking into the issue? Is it because we're uncomfortable with questioning our self-image of absolute rationality?
Anecdotally, I know several people well over 40 who don't seem to have a healthy relationship with social media. Would love to have scientific evidence on that.
If you want an example, a neighbour of mine spends the day spamming me with some pretty nasty far-right stuff on Twitter in an effort to make me see the light. In real life he seems normal enough, I tell him to take a break from Twitter, he's stuck in an echo chamber, and it'll do him no good. Then later on he goes back to spamming me with shit off Twitter.
You don't need to guess what kind of party he voted for in the European elections. Musk knows exactly what he's doing. He doesn't care that Twitter is losing money, it's his investment, exactly like the people bankrolling GB News is in the UK.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey neighbor, neighbor, neighbor, neighbor, neighbor you, you, you, you, you live, live, live, live, live, in, in, in, in, in, an, an, an, an, an, echo, echo, echo, echo, echo, chamber, chamber, chamber, chamber, chamber!
The story of the pot and the kettle comes to mind!
Politics and social media are ... a difficult topic. I have positions, but I don't want to start decrying social media because of that; if I did, I'd just come off as partisan, and I wouldn't convince anyone.
I really was thinking about the exact same things that are described in the article. Spending a lot of time consuming extremely low-quality content, just because it's there. Constantly interrupting what you're doing in order to check notifications. Anxiety when unable to respond quickly. Negative self-worth messages from comparing our real life with the highly redacted and filtered fake lives of other people. Negative body image - can anybody really believe that it's just an adolescent problem? The same stuff that we worry about for kids, it's just as bad for us.
I suspect that if we started acknowledging that, and doing something about that, then the problems with politics would largely sort themselves out.
For a long time, there was quite a bit of general messaging that smoking was bad for you, but the addiction part and the "coolness" peer pressure aspect were formidable hills to climb.
I think the back of the problem was broken when there was a groundswell of acceptance that it wasn't cool any more. I would be interested to see some analysis and a timeline about this, because my memory is that the tide turned very rapidly once it started.
So I would say that what made a difference was a combination of a *lot* of different things. Pictures and messaging on fag packets, ban on TV advertising, rise of products to combat the effects of addiction. Then probably a backlash against them from people that managed to kick the habit: I know of quite a few people that became rabidly anti-cigarette once they managed to give the habit up. All of these things probably contributed to a quick change in general public mood once the process got going.
Could the same thing happen for social media? What would the process look like?
*Increased messaging about the evils of social media---
1) Images of sick looking people hunched over their phones or computers.
2) Messaging that equates social media use with cigarette or other drug addiction.
3) Messaging that pictures people being anti-social (people oblivious during an emergency, couples breaking up while one is obliviously staring at their phone, ...)
* Banning the use of phones casually, except in an emergency, in certain places to make it taboo, i.e. make it "awkward" like we already do in cinemas and at certain concerts. "If we see you on your phone, you will be thrown out, you arsehole."
* Encourage people to call others out when they are using social media in places where they should be doing something else, like at work.
* Enforced warnings on prominent social media webpages and apps
* Make social media use illegal for children, and enforce the law with teeth.
I think they is to get people on board with you to make a social change. Nobody wants to be told what to do. They need to be convinced with evidence, and *lots* of it. The tide turned for cigarettes when there was a groundswell from the public, helped along by the government, not draconially imposed by it.
"Encourage people to call others out when they are using social media in places where they should be doing something else, like at work"
Roll on the snitcher culture of "village aunties" (which incidentally is already arising in other contexts and should not be encouraged).
For all the perceived hazards (and some of them are indeed real) the state is not the primary organ that should be attempting to control this. There are people called "parents" who these days seem in many cases not to recognised what their function is -- not least instilling resilience and a sense of proportion in their offspring so they can cope better with the online nasties.
The chief danger of centralised control of peoples' habits is that it tends to expand without limit until everyone is walking submissively in lockstep and there is no original voice left (see Asimov, "2430 A.D." (1970). The optimum function for the state would therefore be to control the service providers instead of trying to coerce ordinary folks.
> Roll on the snitcher culture of "village aunties" (which incidentally is already arising in other contexts and should not be encouraged).
So you condemn peer pressure to get people to quit, but you're quite on-board with peer pressure to get people to start, which is how most people got addicted in the first place?
Honestly, I would be more convinced by the argument if it wasn't so damn hypocritical.
Just to be absolutely clear, I think the government has a role to steer solutions to public health crises, but the people themselves need to be the driving force. And public health crisis it *used* to be. The biggest cause of death and a main or contributory cause. Not a noble death that the adverts would have had you believe, looking cool sitting on your stallion in front of the sunset, puffing on your fag, but coughing and spluttering your guts up in a hospital ward, barely able to breath, probably in your 40s (like my neighbour) or your 50s.
"So you condemn peer pressure to get people to quit, but you're quite on-board with peer pressure to get people to start,"
Did they say that? I'm not them, but as I agree with some of what they said, I'll try to defend them.
I take a negative view toward anyone who believes they should chide someone for not being on social media, but that view is not much different if they're chiding them to not be on social media. Consider for the moment someone chiding you for posting to the El Reg forums. It would be annoying. It wouldn't make you like them. Perhaps most importantly, it wouldn't change your mind, would it? If they were more extreme, you might stop to get them to stop, but it wouldn't be because you understood why or even that they were necessarily correct.
Nope, in fact, some of us started collecting cigarette packs trying to complete a full set of 'warnings'. In any event, I always asked the clerk behind the counter for the packs with the 'may cause birth defects in children' because I don't have children.
If you don't want to pay to treat poor smokers, then you'll have to leave your free-healthcare country.
Yeah, I'm less convinced that the pictures affected the decisions of children, who aren't generally overly concerned with consequences.
It may be that some kids rebelled against their parents in deciding to not smoke, probably only a small component though. If it is cool for your parents, it's not cool for the kids.
There is surely still a contingent of kids that smoke now as a rebellious act. It probably doesn't go very far though and most likely grow out of it.
I don't smoke, because my father, mother and sister did.
I don't drink, because my father, mother and sister did.
I don't drug, because my sister did.
I'm still alive, because of their wonderful demonstrations of what not to do.
One version of "how not to be stupid" is:
“Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” ― Otto von Bismarck
WTF are we listening to the Surgeon General about social issues let alone social media?
Not that they or the office shouldn't look into the impacts of things beyond simple diseases, workplace toxins, and nutrition. Just that they shouldn't be pushing policy positions outside their limited scope of authority, and a close look needs to be taken on work they produce that lies in whole on in part outside of their own wheelhouse.
This is the sort of publication that is causing them friction for overreach. They also can't seem to muster the energy to go after real and obvious issues that ARE in the their domain, so I'd love to see them hitting back at the current crop of snake oil products the influencers on those toxic social media are pushing in addition to the networks. Even there they can and are partnering with the FDA.
But they seem to happy going solo to chase headlines instead of working with the other stakeholders and policy makers in Washington. Toxic social media isn't a literal poison, cars aren't a communicable disease, and not everything that is "harmful" should be subject to "doctors recommendations". The idiotic policy the preceding holders set led to doctors questioning and berating patients who came in for completely unrelated care. There was a great follow up study on that where they showed the patients felt ignored, fat shamed, and offended. The result was a large net negative outcome in both near and long term health outcomes in patients as the lecturing doctors missed and misdiagnosed the patients at an increased rate, humiliated patients suffered relapse of eating disorders, self-harm and outright suicide. Similar results are coming in for adding mandatory questioning of home gun ownership, which yielded moderately negative outcomes once the sample size grew, and also spawned a political backlash against the entire healthcare system, leading to increased code green(agitated patient/assault on staff) incidents across the healthcare system. It was also free recruiting material for the anti-vaxxers and conspiracy wingnuts.
So if they want tackle social media, they learn from those mistakes and be standing shoulder to shoulder with the other agencies when they show up, and let someone else take the podium first.
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