Surgeon General: ‘Growing evidence’ that social media use is ‘associated with harms’ for children

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy joins Andrea Mitchell for a conversation on why he’s issuing a new warning that social media can harm the mental health of teens and younger children. “In the advisory, we lay out the publicly available evidence, and we conclude that there is not enough evidence to say social media is sufficiently safe for our kids. In fact, there’s growing evidence that its use is associated with harms for our children,” Murthy says. He adds that there are steps parents can take, but “we can't continue to place the entire burden of managing social media and kids on the shoulders of parents. That's what's been happening up until now. But parents need help, and we need policymakers and technology companies to step in and provide that support.”May 23, 2023