Social media is a public health threat for our youth. Our leaders must take it seriously

And yet that’s a reasonable interpretation of the minister’s comments when asked for his view on the U.S. surgeon general’s call for warning labels on social media platforms. “I don’t think that when a parent is talking to their kids about social media, that it’s helpful if I tell them that there’s problems or dangers with it.”

In other words, let’s depend on parents alone to keep our children safe. Health Canada needn’t play a role in warning children and their parents of potential harm. The minister’s take: “I don’t think there’s a parent in the country who doesn’t understand how injurious social media can be to young people. Having open, honest conversations with our kids about social media, I think is the answer.”

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has a different perspective. In a recent column in The New York Times, Murthy underscored that the mental health crisis among young people is an emergency and highlighted social media as an important contributor. Parents, he added, feel “helpless and alone in the face of toxic content and hidden harms.”

Can warning labels increase awareness and change behaviour? Murthy points to tobacco as evidence that they can. We recall that Health Canada has been at the forefront of public health tobacco warnings going all the way back to the 1960s. But let’s remember the decades it took to pry loose the truth of the known public health risks and addictive nature of nicotine from Big Tobacco.

The key questions to pose are these: do we deem the online harms of social media a public health threat? And can we afford to leave it to Big Tech companies to ensure their products are safe?

The health minister should answer “yes” in the first case.

Anxiety, depression, negative body image: research into the degree of negative harm from social media is ongoing. Last fall, Gallup’s polling of U.S. teens revealed that 41 per cent rated their mental health as poor or very poor if they used social media more than five hours a day. Five hours of social media use a day is pretty much the average for that cohort. Thirty per cent of teens spend six hours or more on social media daily.

As to the second, the American Psychological Association provides a swift answer: the addictive design of such features as infinite scroll — the constant loading of content — is particularly risky for youth whose still-plastic brains are developing. Tech companies, the association notes, have been too slow to address the inherent dangers in their platforms.

So what’s the answer? Of course the minister is right that parental guidance is an important part — strong parental relationships and regulation of use are shown to have significant positive effects. And no doubt the tech giants have a responsibility to act. But this is a crisis we can’t leave to individuals or tech companies to solve.

A big fix is needed, not easy given the built-in opposition along the tech frontier to regulation of any kind. Of course legislation is an important part of any remedy. Some jurisdictions have been ahead of Canada in exploring legislative options, from forcing tech companies to turn off their algorithms for anyone under 18 to regulating visual filter features that promote body dysmorphia.

Legislation is necessary but it takes time. In the face of this urgent threat, we should be doing what we can to act now. Murthy writes that his medical training taught him to respond to emergencies with urgency. Originally appointed by former U.S. President Barack Obama, fired by successor Donald Trump, reappointed by current president Joe Biden, Murthy has said that he was asked by Obama to “look out for the health of a nation.”

That would be a helpful stance for Holland to adopt.

“There is no responsibility we hold that is more sacred than caring for our children,” Murthy said in an interview this week with MSNBC.

We need to hear from our own public health leaders that they are taking the public health threat to our youth seriously.