{"id":8049,"date":"2024-06-19T09:03:27","date_gmt":"2024-06-19T09:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=8049"},"modified":"2024-06-19T09:26:31","modified_gmt":"2024-06-19T09:26:31","slug":"researchers-say-social-media-warning-is-too-broad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=8049","title":{"rendered":"Researchers Say Social Media Warning Is Too Broad"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Some scientists who study youth mental health say the evidence does not support the notion that social media is harmful per se.<\/p>\n

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When the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, announced on Monday that he was planning to push for a mental health warning label on social media platforms, he was met with cheers from many parents and teachers, who described a long, lonely struggle to wrench children away from a habit that was hurting them.<\/p>\n

He got a cooler reaction, however, from some scientists who study the relationship between social media and mental health. In interviews, several researchers said the blanket warning Dr. Murthy has proposed \u2014 \u201csocial media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents\u201d \u2014 stretches and oversimplifies the scientific evidence.<\/p>\n

For many years, researchers have tried to determine whether the amount of time a child spent on social media contributed to poor mental health, and \u201cthe results have been really mixed, with probably the consensus being that no, it\u2019s not related,\u201d said Dr. Mitch Prinstein, the chief science officer at the American Psychological Association.<\/p>\n

What seems to matter more, he said, is what they are doing when they are online \u2014 content about self-harm, for example, has been shown to increase self-harming behavior.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like saying, \u2018Is the number of calories that you eat good for you or bad for you?\u2019\u201d said Dr. Prinstein, who testified before the Senate on the subject last year.<\/a> \u201cIt depends. Is it candy, or is it vegetables? If your child is spending all day on social media following The New York Times feed and talking about it with their friends, that\u2019s probably fine, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

Like other scientists interviewed, Dr. Prinstein applauded Dr. Murthy for drawing attention to the mental health crisis. He said he was very optimistic about policy changes that might follow, to keep social media use from interfering with school, sleep and physical activity. After Dr. Murthy\u2019s announcement, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California called for a statewide ban<\/a> on smartphone use in California schools.<\/p>\n

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Some scientists who study youth mental health say the evidence does not support the notion that social media is harmful per se.When the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, announced on Monday that he was planning to push for a mental health warning label on social media platforms, he was met with cheers from many parents and teachers, who described a long, lonely struggle to wrench children away from a habit that was hurting them.He got a cooler reaction, however, from some scientists who study the relationship between social media and mental health. In interviews, several researchers said the blanket warning Dr. Murthy has proposed \u2014 \u201csocial media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents\u201d \u2014 stretches and oversimplifies the scientific evidence.For many years, researchers have tried to determine whether the amount of time a child spent on social media contributed to poor mental health, and \u201cthe results have been really mixed, with probably the consensus being that no, it\u2019s not related,\u201d said Dr. Mitch Prinstein, the chief science officer at the American Psychological Association.What seems to matter more, he said, is what they are doing when they are online \u2014 content about self-harm, for example, has been shown to increase self-harming behavior.\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like saying, \u2018Is the number of calories that you eat good for you or bad for you?\u2019\u201d said Dr. Prinstein, who testified before the Senate on the subject last year. \u201cIt depends. Is it candy, or is it vegetables? If your child is spending all day on social media following The New York Times feed and talking about it with their friends, that\u2019s probably fine, you know?\u201dLike other scientists interviewed, Dr. Prinstein applauded Dr. Murthy for drawing attention to the mental health crisis. He said he was very optimistic about policy changes that might follow, to keep social media use from interfering with school, sleep and physical activity. After Dr. Murthy\u2019s announcement, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California called for a statewide ban on smartphone use in California schools.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8051,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8049"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8052,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8049\/revisions\/8052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}