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A Deeper Look At The Surgeon General’s Report On Kids & Social Media: It’s Not What You Heard
from the we-have-no-evidence,-so-let's-freak-out dept
We had just recently written about the American Psychological Association’s very thorough and detailed report going through much of the research about the impact of social media on the mental health of kids. That report was careful, and nuanced, and basically said that there is little evidence that social media is inherently bad for kids. It noted that studies suggested social media actually seems to be beneficial for many kids, and in the cases where it’s harmful, there are often other, extenuating circumstances. It had many recommendations, focused mainly on better educating children about how to use social media appropriately, rather than any sort of moral panic about it (of course, as we noted, the media still misrepresented the study and claimed it “warned of social media’s potential harm to kids.”)
A few months ago, we also wrote about the giant Pew study on teens and social media, which further found that most teens get real value out of social media, and only a really small percentage of them struggled with social media.
It was nice to see these reports and their thorough, detailed findings, as they pushed back on the growing moral panic that is enveloping much of the media and the political world regarding social media and kids.
So I was curious earlier this week when Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, released his Social Media and Youth Mental Health report. Nearly all the reporting I saw on it suggested that it was like the opposite of the APA release, and that it talked up how social media was absolutely putting kids at risk and something needed to be done.
But… that’s not exactly what the report says.
Indeed, somewhat bizarrely, it reads kinda like the off-brand version of the APA report, with fewer details, less nuance, and a less clear plan. It cites some of the same studies.
Like the APA report, it also says the evidence of a causal impact is lacking, and (like the APA report) it says that it appears social media is good for some and not good for others. Like the APA report, it clearly lays out the benefits of social media for kids:
Social media can provide benefits for some youth by providing positive community and connection with others who share identities, abilities, and interests. It can provide access to important information and create a space for self-expression. The ability to form and maintain friendships online and develop social connections are among the positive effects of social media use for youth. , These relationships can afford opportunities to have positive interactions with more diverse peer groups than are available to them offline and can provide important social support to youth. The buffering effects against stress that online social support from peers may provide can be especially important for youth who are often marginalized, including racial, ethnic, and sexual and gender minorities. , For example, studies have shown that social media may support the mental health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, transgender, queer, intersex and other youths by enabling peer connection, identity development and management, and social support. 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 (58%), like they have people who can support them through tough times (67%), like they have a place to show their creative side (71%), and more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives (80%). In addition, research suggests that social media-based and other digitally-based mental health interventions may also be helpful for some children and adolescents by promoting help-seeking behaviors and serving as a gateway to initiating mental health care.
Then it also notes that for some, it might be negative. The same thing Pew and the APA report said. But even there, the report notes that there isn’t necessarily any evidence of a causal link, just “reasons for concern about the potential negative impact.”
And, even there, it looks like Murthy is doing some cherry-picking in how the data is presented. It quotes the Pew study (which again, focused on how only a small percentage of teens had negative experiences with social media, and a larger percentage found it helpful), but just to say that more than a third of those aged 13 to 17 use social media “almost constantly.” This “almost constantly” is trotted out frequently (including in school district lawsuits) without putting it into context. First, social media covers lots of tools. Kids use Discord to communicate with each other (and to track predator teachers), which is way different than just staring at images and videos all day. And again, there are lots of things that kids do “almost constantly” — such as attending school — that we don’t consider to be problematic.
The question is whether this usage is a problem or not, and all of these reports are saying that for most kids, the answer is no. For a very small percentage, however, there are real risks. And efforts should be focused on those individuals, rather than taking away all of the benefits that these reports describe social media as providing kids.
And the report then notes that there are many areas where we just don’t have enough information to say one way or another what’s a good approach and what’s bad. That’s also useful, as hopefully it will lead to even more research on this stuff.
Unfortunately, though, after this opening, the report basically says “well, even though we don’t really have enough evidence that social media is bad for kids, and a bunch of evidence of how it’s good, we should stop kids from using it just in case it turns out to be bad.” Which is… a really weird takeaway, unless, you are writing to a foregone conclusion that the details of your report don’t actually support:
Our children and adolescents don’t have the luxury of waiting years until we know the full extent of social media’s impact. Their childhoods and development are happening now. While social media use can have positive impacts for some children, the evidence noted throughout this Surgeon General’s Advisory necessitates significant concern with the way it is currently designed, deployed, and utilized. Child and adolescent use of platforms designed for adults places them at high risk of “unsupervised, developmentally inappropriate, and potentially harmful” use according to the National Scientific Council on Adolescence. At a moment when we are experiencing a national youth mental health crisis, now is the time to act swiftly and decisively to protect children and adolescents from risk of harm.
It is difficult to see how you get to this paragraph and think it makes any sense given all of the other statements. It’s like saying: “Cars are beneficial to people because they help people traverse long distances which has many benefits. Cars are also dangerous because they can crash and kill people. So, while there are benefits and negatives, we have to ban all cars to stop the negatives.”
Life is about tradeoffs. This report highlights all the tradeoffs… and then throws them in the garbage to say “but we can’t worry about the benefits, we just need to focus on stopping the negatives.”
The actual recommendations in the report are a little better, but it includes very dangerous suggestions like age verification (which is a privacy nightmare). It does (like the APA report) talk about how parents have to take on responsibility for educating their kids on the proper use of social media, and how more tools should be provided to them. Those are perfectly good suggestions.
But, of course, with the framing of “we must protect the children” the media had a fucking field say with the report, highlighting only the claims of the harms to children, and totally ignoring how much of the report actually talks about the benefits.
So, uh, yeah. The report says that there are clear benefits, that there may be some risks, but that the research isn’t really there to prove it, and then has a little moral panic saying we need to overprotect before we know what’s happening for sure, and every news org runs with the scare tactic headline.
If it bleeds, it leads, I guess.
Of course, as a separate NY Times article highlights, these Surgeon General advisories have happened a bunch of times over the past few decades, some for good causes, and some have marked real turning points, such as around smoking and drunk driving. However, it also details some pretty embarrassing ones that were total jokes, such as the attempts by Surgeon Generals to insist that TV and video games were damaging to children, both of which were later debunked as moral panics.
What’s almost hilarious is that the 1972 report on the negative effects of TV has many similarities to this new report. It kicks off saying this:
But then immediately says “nevertheless” and immediately just starts listing out studies that claim that watching TV leads to aggression.
So, just like this latest study, there are nods towards the more nuanced position, but then that just gets bowled over by the “but moral panic and fear” part.
Maybe the next Surgeon General can issue an advisory on the impact of moral panics.
Filed Under: kids, kids and social media, moral panic, research, social media, surgeon general, teens, vivek murthy
Comments on “A Deeper Look At The Surgeon General’s Report On Kids & Social Media: It’s Not What You Heard”
Social Media is the New Video Games
This all reminds me of the great moral panic of the 1990’s – 2010’s about how video games were going to turn us all into psycho killers. The media liked to pump out waves of articles claiming that there is indisputable evidence that video games are to blame for things like gang violence, mass shootings, teen pregnancies, and pretty much any other societal ill they can think of.
The problem with it all is that the research was, at best, inconclusive and often debunked such nonsense claims. Throughout it all, I figured that the large media companies were pushing this nonsense narrative because they didn’t like the idea of video games taking away attention (and eyeballs) from them. If the link tax debates proved anything, the large media companies have no problem pushing BS narratives to support what they perceive is in their business interests, not necessarily what’s in everyone’s best interests.
It’s why I look at the moral panic of social media destroying children’s lives being pushed by similar forces and motives. The large media heads know that people are tuning out of TV broadcast news and not bothering as much with big name publications and enjoying social media. So, the idea is to demonize all of social media as this nebulous threat to stay away from entirely and to please keep reading their headlines or watching their newscasts and they will twists the words of anyone to accomplish this goal.
… and the media companies wonder why trust in the large media companies have dropped over the years.
Oh yeah .. remember Hot Coffee?
– lmao
Moral panic was strong with that one.
Going back further, there is the OMG rock ‘n roll is the Devil’s music crowd. They would not show Elvis below the waist on TV. Prudes.
Rinse, Repeat.
Re: Hot Coffee? Rings a bell…
Not only do I remember Hot Coffee, but I showed it to my dad, who laughed.
Full Disclosure: This was long before I worked at Take-Two Interactive. Also, I don’t work there anymore; I got laid off because PlayDots in NYC got closed down. That being said, I’m still on good terms with Take-Two
Re:
Goes back to the ancient Greeks.
We’ve always been like that.
Guess which political group will claim that that is evidence of damage, they are actively pushing laws against any support for those groups.
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So we’re saying LGBTQ+ communities saved social media? They really are the savior of everything. All hail the alphabet mafia master race! Long live Demi Lovato!
Re: Re:
Wow, have you got that backwards. They’re saying that social media is helping LGBTQ+ youths, not the other way around. You should really fix your reading comprehension skills.
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Exactly. The fact that social media is helping LGBTQ+ youths is proof that we need them to prevent any infringements on social media.
This is all good and I don’t argue with the findings here. But here is where I depart with the author’s commentary.
The thing that differentiates social media from TV (and other media) is its level of penetration. There is simply no historical comparison to make of the effects of social media on the same level of ubiquity, given that it functions as a parasite to a society saturated with mobile communication. The intensity of social media’s presence and its relevance to minors’ lives has no precedent. Thus, even if it “might” be bad for some kids, that is saying a lot more than if TV or comic books “might” be bad for some kids.
Second, and apologies in advance for getting all McLuhan-y on unsuspecting tech blog readers, the argument between the effect of social media and other similarly satanic media (video games, TV, tamagotchis, etc.) is not so much about it being “bad” in some objective sense, as if social media causes MORE psoriasis or scurvy. Rather, it is about how sensory perception is re-organized, given that the social media/mobile phone technology is a uniquely designed extension of some native form of cognition (algorithmically optimized for a business model). It carries with it its own psychological grammar.
Thus: Total immersion in a form of communication that replaces in-person non-verbal sensitivity with mechanized “like” signals in a semantically slim context changes something. Whether anyone can quantify that as bad is up to the scientists to determine, but it’s changing something, profoundly.
My Spidey sense tells me that several generations of social media users will have gained something valuable, as has been stated in the research above. But then they will also have lost something as a matter of atrophy or from never having developed it. Thus, most of us don’t know how to milk a cow because we can just buy milk in a bottle down the street. No particular loss there. But humanistic interpersonal skills is another matter. That is what I am most concerned about.
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Every moral panic has some justification for how it’s different from all the other ones.
Video games were different from movies because they were interactive.
Movies were different from comic books because they had moving pictures.
Comic books were different from dime novels because they were made up entirely of pictures and you didn’t even have to be literate to “read” them.
And on and on, down through the ages.
This time is always different from all those other times. This time is always justified, unlike all those other times that were laughably misguided with the benefit of hindsight.
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Yeah, but this time it’s different.
J/K, but in all seriousness, it actually is different because, unlike all of the other examples you list…
This is not just a moral panic in the conventional sense. (Yes, too many people are overreacting to it). But it is also a leviathan that is controlled by an elite few extraordinarily powerful men whom millions of people worship as geniuses. That, in itself, is enough to panic about.
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And yet, most of the horror stories from social media usage have nothing to do with that either. Teens don’t drive themselves into body image issues or suicide because a popular CEO has access to their Instastories. They do it because the human desire to compare themselves with other people is inevitable, as is the nature of people in groups harassing someone for their alleged mediocrity.
Social media could literally disappear tomorrow and it won’t stop kids from being assholes to each other, or parents from comparing them to other kids and shame them for their lack of achievement. And here’s the thing – people argue about social media being harmful for kids, but where’s the argument for social media being harmful for adults? Do we honestly believe that adults are immune to the same harms that are alleged for kids? Are adults themselves not also subject to the same forces of misinformation that led to shit like Jan 6th? Are they not capable of even more damage simply based on the fact that they are adults, with access to even more resources to inflict suffering and destruction?
Social media has harms, sure, but you’re going to need more than a tired “for the children” meme to build a report on.
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Weevie,
I suggest you at least Techdirt’s coverage of the issue before offering your opinion.
I don’t disagree with the reaxh and potential effects, but do remember this.
People create moral panics. And spread it via the same social media you revile.
Rupert Murdoch and his accursed media empire has done more to hurt humanity than Zuck and Facebook will ever do. Even if Zuck did help immensely.
Re: Re: Re:2
Thank you for your sanctimony, but I have read all of it. My positions are rooted in a decade of research related to several courses I teach on the subject.
You are correct that people create moral panics. Except this is not (just) a moral panic. It is cultural shift driven by business models that cause psychological effects influencing the perception of reality. It creates an endemic distortion field of misinformation on a scale of hundreds of millions.
I do not disagree with the evidence presented by the author. It is not, however, the complete picture,
Sorry, no. This is different.
Re: Re: Re:3
The language of the moral panic, however, is oh so familiar. Genuine and fair criticisms of social media’s shortcomings shouldn’t be boiled down to “this is immoral, ban plz”.
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Re: Re: Re:4
The corollary is to claim things are never different, when obviously, sometimes, they are.
Re: Re: Re:5
People gossiped, lied, and said/though bigoted things before social media. Other than the visibility and speed of spread offered by social media, how does social media make human behavior any different?
Re: Re: Re:3
I’m hoping you don’t see what I’m saying as mere noise. I do not NEED another asshole physically threatening me, implied or otherwise.
Won’t disagree.
Yes to the first part, and to the second, considering that there are many, many levers that affect the roleplaying game that is the stock market…
Maybe the problem lies in the notion of the stock market itself.
And before that, TV, Radio, Newspapers… Not wrong though.
It IS important enough that there are policies written regarding its use. And as for career platform, that’s only LinkedIn for normal jobs, and a consideration for every other platform.
Yes and no. However, the pressure to network is the root cause.
Yes. Same for newspapers, and gossip.
One of many factors. Spanning SEVERAL DECADES. I’d wager voter disenfrancisement was the bigger factor, but to each their own.
One of many. The fucking Soviets ran disinfo psyops before the Internet was a thing. I think.
Not gonna disagree there.
You know what totalitarian governments used before the internet? HUMAN INFORMANTS. The CIA uses it, Mossad uses it, the fucking Confucius Institutes probably use it as well, every fucking spy agency in the world use HUMANS to spy on the enemy. Social media just makes it easier, yes.
The American government is… unique in how captured it is. But governments everywhere have varying uses and understanding.
Yes and no, but I don’t know enough to form an opinion.
And those are influenced by PEOPLE. Authcap states have greater influence over content flows than corps. Sometimes aided by social media companies.
You are right that it is a legitimate concern. But it’s not because of the factors you vehemently believe are. It definitely needs more research, yes, but not when you act like it’s a fucking moral panic.
Been through the gaming moral panic and Jack Thompson should die in a fucking fire.
Re: Re: Re:3
Social media is not different, just faster that mail, phone calls and magazines. Also, it has made more conversations more visible.
Consider that the Hippy movement spread through western culture without the Internet.
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Your statements of your positions suggest otherwise.
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Two things. First, your position is based on how you interpret and question the information you came across during your research which means it’s inherently subjective to a certain degree – especially if you where predisposed to a certain outcome from the beginning. Second, never be in love with your own theory or conclusions to the degree that you ignore criticisms directed at it.
Not really, it all comes down to how people in general functions. People tend to believe the simple but wrong argument/position over a complex/nuanced and correct argument/position. This has been true from the moment humans gained the ability to walk upright and communicate ideas with speech. What has happened is that technology has facilitated the ease and speed of how ideas spread, this has been a steady progression since the first proto-human drew a stick figure in the mud somewhere. The actual cultural shift is in the fact that people no longer question things from unknown sources since anyone can seem to belong to the “in-group” as long as they say the “right things” in an anonymous fashion (social media et al) compared to how it was: don’t unconditionally trust the stranger on your door-step until that person have been proven trustworthy.
The effects of misinformation is most felt in totalitarian countries or in countries that are politically fractured where the population largely can be considered poorly educated on many subjects, like the US.
YMMV.
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Video games alone ticks 7 of those boxes, comic books also tick some of those boxes, be it though subsequent adaption to other mediums and the reverse (Need I remind you Marvel and DC exist) or depending on if you count it as part of that category: Manga.
Re: Re: Re:2
And before that, rock music.
And before that, blues.
And before that, Karl Marx.
And before that, fictional novels.
And before that, GOING TO THE CITY TO FIND WORK.
…and even before that, “whatever that is new”.
We don’t like change, is what I’m saying.
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*facepalm*
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“But it is also a leviathan that is controlled by an elite few extraordinarily powerful men whom millions of people worship as geniuses”
Who do you think are in charge of the production of videogames, movies, and comic books? Are those individuals not also worshipped by millions as geniuses?
Re: Re: Re:2
Video games, as an industry, is… less consolidated than one might think.
Sure, there’s the Big Three that handle many, many studios and publishing labels, but even then, there’s quite a few smaller publishers and hundreds of much smaller Studios, some of them being run by individuals.
Yes, it’s true that Valve and Epic run the biggest digital storefronts, but Valve isn’t looking to M&A the devs that use their storefront (Epic, on the other hand…)
Mind you, I’m not denying that consolidation isn’t a thing. I mean, Sony and fucking Microsoft engage in it. Bethsoft engaged in some shitty tactics to force an M&A.
There’s still a ton of indies making games. Unlike the movie and comic industries, where there’s a small group of MNCs and maybe a few small studios/comic publishers.
Re: Re: Re:3
You’re talking about the current industry. The moral panic about them predates the time when indies became ubiquitous. And for awhile, pretty much every video game that people actually played had to be approved by one of a select few companies.
Re: Re: Re:3
You say it like those individuals aren’t worshipped as geniuses. They might not be powerful, but I don’t think you’ll find many who don’t look at Tim Schafer or Lucas Pope or the like as geniuses.
Hell, Gabe Newell is still looked upon favorably despite Valve… generally not being particularly significant after the most recent Half-Life additions from a few years back, not to mention the arguably disastrous launch of Artifacts.
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I’m not seeing how most of these are even substantial differences in the first place.
The billions is relatively new, sure, but as for being global, so are MMORPGs, which came first, and while no single paper, TV station, or radio station was quite as global as social media is today, they were still collectively about as global, and some individual ones did have intercontinental reach.
Same with video games, comics, TV, etc. And I don’t think the digital economy is substantially different from other kinds of economies in any way that is meaningful to this issue.
So were newspapers, magazines, radio, telephones, TV, films, etc.
Same with every other platform.
There are plenty of people not on them, but again, there was just as much pressure to be in on every trend that was just as unrelenting.
Again, this is nothing new, either.
One single instance does not support a trend.
Again, I’m not seeing anything new in kind here.
I’ll grant this one as being new.
So are smartphones and the internet as a whole.
This could apply to the internet as a whole, among many other things. They also were (and still are) just as incapable regarding video games and computers.
I don’t think that that’s about relevance, and I’m not sure how that’s substantially different from the addition of TV to journalism.
The “algorithmic” part was present for the entirety of the internet, and the rest is just like newspapers, magazines, TV stations, and radio.
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While the Internet has increased the reach of kids, the other big change is that their interactions are much more visible, and a lot of adults have forgotten what they were like as kids.
So the study says most kids have a positive experience using social media including minority groups ,maybe a small no of teens may have negative effects
So let’s clamp down on social media for all young people and put their privacy at risk by bringing in age verification
It seems every new form of media that young people use has to go through a moral panic. Rock and roll. Videogames comicbooks
Now it’s social media
Social media is used by teens to communicate and express themselves
Newspapers see social media as competition for readers
Of course they are happy to repeat surgeon general’s claims that social media could be bad for some young people to use and it should be regulated
Of course if age verification is brought in it’s likely it,ll be used on other apps or websites not just meta or Instagram
“Cars are beneficial to people because they help people traverse long distances which has many benefits. Cars are also dangerous because they can crash and kill people. So, while there are benefits and negatives, we have to ban all cars to stop the negatives.”
Bad example, really.
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No, not really. It’s an example of a societal good, that has harmful aspects. And to be honest, a shitload more real harms than social media. Just check the annual road deaths count, not to mention the pollution harms and compare how many real world harms are caused by social media.