Flutterby™! : Murthy on Social Media

There's a lot of hullabaloo over Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy calling for warning labels on social media, noting that the opinion piece seems to not understand correlation vs causation, and all the usual moral panic fuckwittery.

Mike Masnick has a good takedown at The Surgeon General Is Wrong. Social Media Doesn’t Need Warning Labels

As with video games, the more research we get on teens and social media, the less accurate the moral panic appears. In the last few years alone, we’ve seen more than one organization reach the same conclusion. The National Academies of Sciences released a comprehensive report stating that a “review of the literature did not support the conclusion that social media causes changes in adolescent health at the population level.” The American Psychological Association released a similar report, concluding: “Using social media is not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people.” Instead, it finds that when young people struggle with mental health, their online lives are often just a reflection of their offline lives.

But I prefer to take another view: Since Tipper Gore and the PMRC did the whole warning labels on albums thing, the "Parental Advisory" warning became a must-have on your album cover. The whole "we need to label video games as dangerous" thing likely spurred video game adoption amongst kids.

I think Murthy's just on Meta's payroll, sees the younger users leaving Facebook and the 'Gram, and is trying to prop up their user base.