California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer Kahan new invoice, This would require social media companies to place a warning label on their platforms disclosing mental health risks.
Citing “social media platforms exploiting addictive features and harmful content in order to generate profits,” Attorney General Ponta says consumers should be able to access information about platforms that can affect their mental health. The current bill lacks details about how much information such warning labels must contain or how they must appear, but it mentions the Cyberbullying Protection Act and the Online Violence Prevention Act as a possible precedent for such a requirement. These bills required social media platforms to disclose cyberbullying reporting features in their terms of service, and clearly state whether they have a way to report violent posts to users and non-users on the platform, respectively.
This follows the new bill introduced by Ponta and Bauer-Kahan (including Bonta) who called on Congress to require a warning label from the Surgeon General on social media. US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy proposed the idea himself in an article In June. A Surgeon General’s warning label requires action by Congress, but it can be effective in changing behavior according to Murthy.
You can follow a lot of the recent buzz around kids and social media on published by the US Surgeon General in 2023. The advisory study claimed that social media “can pose a significant risk to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents” and that “children and adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face a double risk of developing health problems.” Mentality Warning labels are unlikely to completely fix things, and social media is not the sole cause of all children’s problems, but labels are another level that can be pulled to change things.
A broader Texas bill would require social media companies to prevent teens from seeing “harmful content.” In 2024, but it requires warning labels on social media, especially considering this Seems more feasible. However, effects on mental health are only one of the risks children face online. there’s still mass surveillance to deal with as well.