Surgeon General Wants Tech Companies to Step Up and Protect Kids From Screens

Now that Meta has agreed to take responsibility for addicting children to its platform, Surgeon General Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos wants other Big Tech companies to address the dangers of screen use for children, she told the Daily Signal. 

Meta agreed last Wednesday to pay up to $18 billion and add stronger child safety measures to Facebook and Instagram. This was part of a settlement that ended the trial over the company intentionally addicting minors to its platforms. 

“They are rising to the occasion with hopefully changing some of their standards from the settlement last week with Meta,” Haridopolos said in an exclusive interview. “I think that’s a great start, and hopefully more to come with other tech industry leaders meeting them with their same requirements.” 

On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services held a “Live Real Life” symposium addressing harms caused by screen time, featuring Haridopolos, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. 

While only 1 in 4 high schoolers get 60 minutes of physical activity a day, the average 16-year-old spends a shocking eight and a half hours a day on screens. Toddlers spend two to three hours on screens, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

“That is as much as they go to school and sleep at night,” Haridopolos said. 

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This has led to rising anxiety, depression, sleep disruption, obesity, cyberbullying, and social isolation. 

“There are neurocognitive delays,” Haridopolos said. “That means problems with memory, attention, even the development of the brain.”

Screen time also creates physical harms like musculoskeletal damage, nearsightedness in vision, and sedentary behavior, which leads to obesity and chronic disease.

Test scores and literacy have also taken a hit since personal cellphones were released around 2010, Haridopolos said. 

“Unfortunately, probably the biggest one of all is the mental health and behavioral health harms,” she said. “Depression and anxiety, body dysmorphia, even suicidal ideation, and actual suicide from some of the harms on screen time.” 

President Joe Biden’s surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, called on Congress to put warning labels on social media. Haridopolos praised his effort but said the Trump administration wants to go further. 

“What we did was we wanted to not just keep it to social media and mental health,” she said. “That’s why we talked about all screens, and that’s why we created an advisory that talked about physical harms, neurocognitive, and academic harms.”

Plus, kids aren’t the only ones with screen time issues, Haridopolos said. 

“Adults have to recognize that this affects them too,” she said. “And if an adult who is 50 years old has a hard time stopping the doom scrolling, can you imagine what a 10-year-old child would feel like if they couldn’t stop, and it would be compulsive behavior?”

Haridopolos wants to see schools doing more analog teaching without screens, rather than introducing screens at a young age. 

“That’s better for overall memory, attention, literacy, and full education,” she said. “There’s a difference between ed tech and tech ed, and I really think that we need to go back to having digital citizens and learning how to use tech later on as the kids get older, so they can be productive citizens in a responsible way.”

“But if we are giving one-on-one tablets to the very young and requiring them to do all their homework there, and then they’re sitting sedentary in school, I think that we’re not creating a well-rounded child,” she said. 

Instead, according to Haridopolos, children need to be exposed to “arts and crafts, music, sports, going outside, playing on the playground, and socializing for interpersonal skills and human connection, which our spirits need.”