According to the wording he seeks, “social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.”
This is a reaction to Murthy’s public advisory from the previous year, which warned that social media was a contributing cause to the country’s teenage mental health epidemic.” According to his guidelines, adolescents who use social media for more than three hours a day are twice as likely to experience negative mental health outcomes, such anxiety and depression symptoms.
However, studies reveal that teenagers use social media for around five hours a day on average. Murthy has previously cautioned that 13 is “too early” for social media.
There is sound justification behind these cautions. An internal survey from 2023, made public by former Meta employee and whistleblower Arturo Bejar, found that 13% of young teens (those between the ages of 13 and 15) had experienced “unwanted sexual advances on Instagram in the last seven days alone.” According to data conducted internally by Meta and published in the Wall Street Journal’s 2021 “Facebook Files,” one-third of adolescent girls said Instagram made them feel worse about their bodies.
