[westcort]

The Surgeon General's report [0] cited 3 studies showing 1) that limiting social media to 30 minutes per day among college students for 3 weeks significantly reduced loneliness and depression [1], 2) deactivating Facebook before the 2018 midterm elections increased subjective wellbeing and polarization,[2] and 3) that 10,904 14 year olds in the UK Millennium Cohort Study experienced an increase in depressive symptoms in association with greater daily social media use, with a stronger association for girls than boys (depressive symptoms in adolescents using social media for 3 to <5 h versus 1-3 hours daily were elevated 21% in boys and 26% in girls; with 5 or more hours of use versus 1-3 hours of use daily, depressive symptom scores were elevated 35% in boys and 50% in girls) [3].

Fully 57% of high school aged girls--(more than half!)--experienced feelings of persistent sadness or hopelessness in 2021, up from 36% in 2011 [4]. Over the same timeframe, average time spent using social media each day among teens doubled from about 1.5 hours to more than 3 hours [5].

I am not waiting for a randomized controlled study. There are serious harmful effects of the environment our kids are growing up in today, and part of that is a growth in social media. Let us not forget that Mark Zuckerberg, "personally and repeatedly thwarted initiatives meant to improve the well-being of teens on Facebook and Instagram...[overruling] Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri and President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, who had asked Zuckerberg to do more to protect the more than 30 million teens who use Instagram in the United States." [6] Not enough evidence? In the words of Bob Dylan, "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

Sources

0.https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/sg-youth-mental-heal...

1.https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/jscp.2018.37.10.751

2.https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20190658

3. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5...

4. https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/pdf/YRBS_Data-Sum...

5. https://images.nature.com/lw1200/magazine-assets/d41586-023-...

6. https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/zuckerberg-rejected-...