Axios Murthy: How Do We Really Know What Social Media Can Tell Us About Our Children? An Educator’s View on Social Media and a Call for Action

Recently, though, I’ve begun to feel like we’re making real progress on understanding how social networks affect young people. For too many children, frequent use of social products really does seem bad for them. And the research now appears robust enough that lawmakers can be confident in demanding more from the companies that produce them.

The report notes that advisories from the Surgeon General like the one issued today represent an attempt to call attention to “an urgent public health issue” and recommend how it could be tackled. According to Axios, Murthy can give evidence to help lawmakers and regulators to address an issue if they use his recommendations as a starting point.

According to The New York Times, Dr. Murthy said that adolescence are not just smaller adults. “They’re in a different phase of development, and they’re in a critical phase of brain development.”

The report stated that frequent use of social media could lead to changes in the brain that are important for emotional learning and behavior.

The report also cited research indicating that up to 95 percent of teens reported using at least one social media platform, while more than one-third said they used social media “almost constantly.” In addition, nearly 40 percent of children ages 8 to 12 use social media, even though the required minimum age for most sites is 13.

What we need are standards … and measures that reduce the likelihood kids will be exposed to features that will manipulate them to spend more time on these platforms at the expense of their health.

Seven out of ten adolescent girls of color report encountering positive or identity-affirming content related to race across social media platforms. A majority of adolescents report that social media helps them feel more accepted, like they have people who can support them through tough times and they have a place to show their creative side.

He called on technology companies, researchers, families and policymakers to find solutions to the vulnerabilities that young people face in order to stay safe and healthy.

He joined Morning Edition to discuss the new advisory, what children are saying about social media, and what steps can be taken by the government to increase regulation.

These standards call for measures that protect children from exposure to harmful material, and from being harassed online, particularly from strangers.

It is a lot to take in. I am aware that a lot of you, particularly those who work at social platforms, may not be persuaded of the evidence.

In the meantime, we have enough data to make good recommendations for platforms, lawmakers, parents and children. For platforms, good suggestions include conducting independent assessments of the effects on their products on children and adolescents; establishing scientific advisory committees to inform product development; and sharing data with researchers in a privacy-protective way.

I’m hopeful this will change, though. Thanks to the European Union’s Digital Services Act, academic researchers now have a legal avenue to safely request and study platform data, and I imagine it will be hugely beneficial toward the cause of better understanding social networks’ effects on mental health and many other issues.

There are a lot of things we don’t know. To climb back on an old hobby horse, platforms need to provide more data that will help researchers understand them better. Part of this is for good reasons related to user privacy; part of it is for the bad reason of not really wanting to understand too deeply the harms their own platforms can cause.

Why do children use social media? The good, the bad, and the ugly: What should legislators and politicians need to do about it?

All that said, social network usage clearly also has real benefits for young people. Most young people, even. There’s a reason 95 percent of them use it.

Four, a simple intervention that seems to produce significantly positive results is simply to reduce the time children spend using it. Spending more than three hours a day on social networks doubles the risk of bad mental health outcomes, including depression and anxiety. Legislators should consider creating and enforcing daily time limits for apps like these because voluntary screen time controls don’t seem to be doing enough here.

Moreover, it noted that “a longitudinal prospective study of adolescents without ADHD symptoms at the beginning of the study found that, over a 2-year follow-up, high-frequency use of digital media, with social media as one of the most common activities, was associated with a modest yet statistically significant increased odds of developing ADHD symptoms.”

This state of affairs has contributed to an increase in state level regulation that tries to get kids off their phones. (The other reason, of course, is a total failure of Congress to act.)