US Surgeon General says 13-year-olds are too young to have social media

The US Surgeon General has said that he believes that 13-year-olds are too young to be consuming social media.

Vivek Murthy, the US Surgeon General, appeared on CNN Newsroom and said children and young teens should not be using social media.

"I, personally, based on the data I’ve seen, believe that 13 is too early … it’s a time where it’s really important for us to be thoughtful about what’s going into how they think about their own self-worth and their relationships and the skewed and often distorted environment of social media often does a disservice to many of those children," he said on the program.

Meta — the parent company of Facebook — Twitter, and TikTok all allow 13-year-olds to join their platforms.

Mr Murthy noted that it would be difficult to curb childhood and teen use of the sites due to their immense popularity.

"If parents can band together and say, you know, as a group, we’re not going to allow our kids to use social media until 16 or 17 or 18 or whatever age they choose, that’s a much more effective strategy in making sure your kids don’t get exposed to harm early," he said.

Recently released data suggests that constantly checking social media can alter teens’ brain development.

JAMA Pediatrics reported in a study this month that students who habitually checked their social media accounts showed greater neural sensitivity, which makes them more sensitive to social consequences as they develop.

Dr Adriana Stacey, a psychiatrist working with teens and college students, told CNN that social media provides a sort of "dopamine dump" that provides instant gratification similar to using drugs.

Mr Murthy told CNN that tech developers designing products specifically meant to keep users returning and spending time on their platforms is "not a fair fight" for adolescents whose brains are still in development.

"You have some of the best designers and product developers in the world who have designed these products to make sure people are maximizing the amount of time they spend on these platforms," he said. "And if we tell a child, use the force of your willpower to control how much time you’re spending, you’re pitting a child against the world’s greatest product designers."

He said that despite the difficulty, it is possible to improve the social media landscape for teens and young children, noting that vehicles used to be more dangerous before legislation forced manufacturers to increase safety standards.