0:00

Emma Limke was only 12 years old

0:02

when many of her friends started using

0:05

social media. As each one got a

0:07

phone, things changed. Each

0:09

one of them, as a result,

0:11

was getting pulled away from kind of

0:14

conversation with me, from hanging

0:16

out with me, from even like playing on

0:18

the playground, like hanging out outside at school.

0:21

It felt as though my interactions were

0:23

dwindling. She figured there must be something

0:25

special about these apps that would keep

0:27

her friends from hanging out with her.

0:30

Limke begged her parents to get her

0:32

a smartphone of her own. Eventually,

0:35

they caved. I got Instagram,

0:38

and I remember for the first few months

0:40

I was in love with it. I

0:43

followed Kim Kardashian to

0:45

Olive Garden. But over those few

0:47

months, Limke's time on her phone

0:49

rose from one hour to five,

0:52

six hours a day. As

0:54

I began to scroll more, I felt

0:56

my mental and my physical health

0:59

really suffer. Today, Limke is the

1:01

founder of a project called Log

1:03

Off. It's part of

1:05

a growing movement by teens and

1:07

young adults to help adolescents minimize

1:09

the harms of social media while

1:11

maximizing its benefits. Yet even she

1:14

found it hard to stop using

1:16

social media, and she's not alone.

1:19

NPR spoke with other teens and

1:21

young adults who felt they had

1:23

become addicted to their phones, like

1:25

Sophie Kepler. Before I go

1:27

to bed, when I wake up in

1:29

the morning, when I'm at school, just

1:32

you get so like involved, keep scrolling

1:34

and scrolling and scrolling, like constantly scrolling.

1:37

Also, visual aorta. Overall, I could

1:39

see that I had a toxic relationship with social

1:41

media. We do have reason to

1:44

think that there are aspects of social

1:46

media, and especially for how some young

1:48

people use social media, that

1:50

contributes to overall distress and

1:52

psychological distress in young people.

2:00

active social media on teens. She

2:02

worries most about time on social

2:04

media taking away from things that

2:06

we know are good for

2:08

kids. Things like getting enough

2:10

sleep, face-to-face interactions, physical activity.

2:12

We also worry about the

2:15

toxic content that they are

2:17

inevitably exposed to on social

2:19

media. There is no

2:21

getting around the fact, given especially the

2:23

algorithmically driven models that we're working with,

2:27

that if a kid is on

2:29

social media, they are going to

2:31

be exposed to hate content, to

2:33

violent content, degrading content, to

2:35

content that promotes unhealthy views of the body

2:37

or the self. Consider

2:40

this, Lisa DeMoure is one

2:42

of many psychologists and experts

2:44

sounding the alarm on

2:46

the mental and emotional damage social

2:48

media may be doing to teens and

2:50

young adults. Coming up, we

2:52

hear from the US Surgeon General on how

2:55

the federal government should step in to help.

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considered this from NPR. The

4:26

mental health crisis among young people is

4:28

an emergency, and social media

4:30

has emerged as an

4:33

important contributor. Well, those are

4:35

the words of US Surgeon General

4:37

Vivek Murthy in a New York

4:39

Times opinion piece calling on Congress

4:41

to require a Surgeon General's warning

4:43

on social media. Dr.

4:45

Murthy goes on to point out that children

4:48

and adolescents who spend more than three hours

4:50

a day on social media have double

4:52

the risk of mental health

4:54

problems, problems like depression and

4:56

anxiety. On average, teens

4:59

spend nearly five hours a

5:01

day on social media. Well,

5:03

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy joined us

5:06

to speak about this, and I want

5:08

to note our conversation does contain a

5:10

reference to suicide. Now, we

5:13

know Congress has tried to address

5:15

this. They have called social media

5:17

executives in to testify. They have

5:19

called for changes to algorithms. However,

5:21

here we are. Why is an

5:24

official Surgeon General warning a

5:26

solution? Surgeon General's warning

5:28

is a part of a broader set of

5:30

solutions. This is a label that

5:32

we have used in the past for tobacco

5:34

products and for alcohol products as well, and

5:37

the data we have from that experience, particularly

5:39

from tobacco labels, shows us that these

5:41

can actually be effective in increasing awareness

5:43

and in changing behavior, but they need

5:46

to be coupled with real changes

5:48

to the platforms themselves. Right

5:50

now, young people are being exposed to

5:53

serious harms online and

5:56

to features that would seek to

5:58

manipulate their developing brains. to

6:00

excessive use, which may be part of the reason

6:02

we are seeing adolescents spending on

6:04

average nearly five hours a day on

6:06

social media. This is features that make it

6:08

almost impossible to look away, like the infinite

6:11

scroll features and auto play where it just

6:13

keeps pumping at you. That's

6:15

right. And if you think about that, adults

6:17

are familiar with these two. But

6:19

there's something unique about the adolescent brain.

6:21

It's a very sensitive stage of

6:24

brain development, adolescents. And so

6:26

when you put that vulnerable brain in

6:28

the setting, of all of these

6:31

features that would seek to bring them back

6:33

and keep them on the platform, it

6:36

is very hard for a young person to pull

6:38

themselves away. Imagine pitting a

6:40

young person, an adolescent, a teenager, against

6:43

the best product engineers in the world who

6:46

are using the most cutting edge brain science

6:48

to figure out how to maximize the time you

6:50

spend on a platform. That is the definition of

6:52

an unfair fight, and it's what our kids are

6:55

up against today. One other piece

6:57

of the complexity of this must

7:00

be that there are

7:02

upsides to social media, right? I mean,

7:04

you and I know them as an

7:06

adult in a way that things

7:09

that past warnings have been attached to don't have.

7:11

Like there's no upside to not wearing a seat

7:13

belt. There's no upside from a health

7:15

point of view to smoking. There are

7:17

upsides to the use of social media in the way

7:20

that they connect people. How do

7:22

you think about that when it comes to

7:24

the youngest Americans who you're trying to protect?

7:27

So last year when I issued my advisory on social

7:29

media and youth mental health, I laid out that they

7:31

were a mix of benefits and harms with social media.

7:33

It's true that some kids find that

7:35

with social media, they can reconnect with old friends.

7:38

They can find a community of people with shared

7:40

experience. But I think about the

7:42

moms and dads and the young people that

7:44

I've met across the road who have talked

7:46

about these harms. I think about Laurie, who

7:48

I wrote about in today's op-ed, who

7:51

spoke about her daughter who was

7:53

mercilessly bullied on social media and

7:55

ultimately who took her own life.

7:58

And her mother was one of the most important people in

8:00

the world. those moms who did everything you could think of.

8:02

She looked at her daughter's phone every day. She

8:05

told her what platform she could not be on.

8:07

And yet she found out afterward that her daughter

8:09

had multiple accounts that she didn't even know about

8:11

because she knew how to hide them. I

8:14

think about the young people themselves who are telling me

8:16

that they feel

8:18

worse about themselves when they use social media.

8:20

They often feel worse about their friendships. But

8:23

they also can't get off of the platforms because

8:25

they're designed to keep them on. I think about

8:27

all of that. And these are cries for help.

8:30

And we've got to respond as a

8:32

country. We have allowed this to go on for nearly

8:35

20 years. The unfettered

8:37

spread of social media with very

8:39

little check, with very little accountability.

8:42

And we're paying for the price of that right now. But it doesn't

8:44

have to remain this way. The warning label I'm

8:46

calling for today would help make sure

8:48

that parents know what we know as

8:51

public health and medical professionals, which is that there

8:53

really is an association here between

8:55

social media use and mental health harms for

8:57

adolescents. If I may make this

8:59

personal, your own children are six and

9:02

seven years old. Is that right? Yes, they're six

9:04

and seven. When are you going to let them

9:06

use social media? So

9:08

my wife and I have talked about this. And we

9:10

have said that we're not going

9:12

to let them use social media until at

9:14

least after middle school. And we will reassess

9:17

in middle school based on a few

9:19

things. One, their maturity to

9:21

what the data says at that time around

9:24

safety. And third, whether or

9:26

not there are safety standards that have been

9:29

put in place and actually enforced. But

9:31

my wife and I also know that

9:34

this is not going to be easy for us to do

9:36

on our own. So literally right now,

9:38

we are in the process of engaging with

9:40

other parents in our school and

9:43

trying to arrange some gatherings

9:45

and meetings where we can collectively talk

9:47

about this common struggle that we have.

9:49

And we realize that if we can build a pact

9:51

with one another as parents to

9:53

take some of these measures, to delay use,

9:55

to create tech-free zones, that we have

9:57

a much better chance of implementing.

10:00

These together and we do

10:02

struggling alone. They

10:04

take more Safe is the U S

10:06

Surgeon General. We've been talking to him

10:08

about his call to add Surgeon General

10:10

warning labels to social media. Thanks so

10:12

much Thanks so much for to be

10:15

with you today and if you or

10:17

someone you know is in crisis. Call

10:19

Or text The Nine Eight Eight Suicide.

10:21

And Crisis Lifeline. Just those

10:23

three digits. Nine, Eight, eight.

10:26

This. Episode was produced. By Mark

10:28

Rivers Catherine. Sink and Karen some

10:31

moron with additional reporting from Michael

10:33

the into class It. Was edited

10:35

by Courtney Dawning and Justin Can are

10:38

executive producer is semi yet again and

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