U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said on CNN Newsroom that he believes 13 is “too early” for children to be using social media, despite that minimum age at which users are allowed to join Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and many other platforms.
Murthy indicated that early adolescence are important formative years in a teenager’s sense of self.
“It’s a time where it’s really important for us to be thoughtful about what’s going into how they think about their own self worth and their relationships,” he said. “And the skewed and often distorted environment of social media often does a disservice to many of those children.”
There is data to back this up, Murthy also said, and local government officials are catching on. Utah Rep. Chris Stewart has proposed making it illegal for children under 16 to use social media. Gov. Spencer Cox has even said the state plans to sue social media companies for hurting children’s mental health.
A popular counterargument to legal action against social media is that parents should be responsible for regulating their children’s electronic device usage. Murthy pointed to these companies’ goal to keep users coming back to their platforms.
“If we tell a child, ‘Use the force of your will power to control how much time you spend,’ you’re pitting a child against the world’s greatest product designers, and that’s just not a fair fight,” he said.
The Surgeon General proposed two possible solutions to the problems social media can create for young teenagers. First, he said increased transparency from social media companies about the negative effects of their platforms is necessary.
He also said safety standards should be implemented to protect children.
“When we had dangerous vehicles on the road, we passed laws to make those vehicles less dangerous,” Murthy said, according to Axios. “We should make decisions to make (social media) a healthier experience that would make kids feel better about themselves and less alone.”