Fun Time: A Warning Label on Social Media Platforms Makes Sense
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wants to require Facebook, X, and other social media platforms to carry a warning label (see below), similar to the labels that appear on tobacco and alcohol products.
SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: This social media platform may cause considerable harm to your mental health. It may cause anxiety and depression. It may make you envious of your online friends, wishing you could have their houses, their cars, their bodies. It may make you wish you could go on vacations like they do, win major awards like they do, raise perfect children like they do. It may make you think of strangers online as close friends, while turning your real-life friends into strangers. It may introduce you to a potential mate, someone who will fall deeply in love with your bank balance. It may take your money to a country you’ve always wanted to visit. It may make your attention span so short that you’ll have trouble reading a long word like “attention.” It may expose you to fake videos and fake news, get you excited about fake likes from fake followers with fake eyelashes. It may collect your personal data and sell it to various companies, causing you to be flooded with ads telling you that “you can make millions by investing in crypto,” “you can regrow your hair in 30 days,” and, even if those things don’t happen, “Russian women are eager to date you.”
Wait... that warning label is too long. Perhaps that’s why Murthy is focusing on just one aspect of social media’s ill effects: its impact on the mental health of adolescents. As he wrote in a New York Times essay, “adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms, and the average daily use in this age group, as of the summer of 2023, was 4.8 hours.”
You may conclude, from those facts, that the average adolescent is getting very average parenting. That’s where a warning label would help, says Murthy. It would remind parents that social media “has not been proved safe.” Letting your child spend more than three hours a day on social media is like letting yourself spend more than three hours a day at the local bar. It’s not good for your health, even if everybody knows your name.
For a warning label to take effect, Congress would need to approve it. That means that Democrats and Republicans would have to agree. First, there would be a debate on the floor of the House of Representatives:
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “I don’t know why anybody would be against a warning label on social media platforms. It makes too much sense. We need to protect our children.”
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene: “I’d rather wait until President Trump appoints a new surgeon general. Why should we listen to Vivek Murphy?”
AOC: “His name is Murthy, not Murphy. Put a ‘T’ where there’s a ‘P.’”
Greene: “Okay, but too much ‘T’ and I have to ‘P.’”
Following the debate, a vote would be taken and Speaker Mike Johnson would announce the results: “By a vote of 299 to 136, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill to put a warning label on Marjorie Taylor Greene.”
A warning label on social media platforms would not be enough, Murthy says. He wants to see other measures, including restrictions on features such as push notifications, autoplay and infinite scroll, which are used by social media platforms to keep adolescents and others hooked. He also wants parents and teachers to establish phone-free zones and periods. Parents need to teach their children that they can survive a few hours without looking at their phones.
Mom: “Put your phone away. We didn’t come on this vacation for you to be on Instagram the whole time.”
Teen: “But Mom, I’m just looking to see if any of my friends are having better vacations.”
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Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge.
[Comments? Contributions? We would love to hear from you about Chai Time. If you have contributions, please email us at melvin@melvindurai.com. We welcome jokes, quotes, online clips, and more.]
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