The Surgeon General’s Social Media Warning

As I’ve gotten older, it’s become more and more clear to me that my grandkids are growing up in a world that’s markedly different than the one I grew up in. Recently, I was looking back at some YouTube videos of talk shows and news broadcasts from the 1960s. I had forgotten just how common smoking cigarettes while on camera actually was. Then as the health risks became known, a Surgeon General’s warning was mandated for cigarette packs in 1965. By 1971, all cigarette ads were banned from radio and tv. Last month, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, in a New York Times opinion piece wrote this: It is time to require a Surgeon General’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents. While there may be some debates moving forward, the message is clear: we as parents need to do our due diligence on monitoring, limiting, and even banning social media for our kids.