The Drew Barrymore Show: U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Social Media and the Mental Health Crisis

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on

Social Media and the Mental Health Crisis

Air Date: Monday, October 7^th

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Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Social Media & The Mental Health Crisis

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/ogGX5KNqG2I0

Vivek: This has become a universal struggle for parents figuring out how to manage technology and social media for their kids. And in fact, when you look at studies around this parents cite technology and social media is the top two causes and reasons why they think parenting is so stressful now compared to a generation ago. And here's what we do know, we're living in the middle of a youth mental health crisis with very high rates of depression, anxiety and suicide among kids. And it's become clear when you look at the data that social media has become one of the important contributors to that youth mental health crisis. You know, last year I issued a report on this topic and we noted that the kids who are spending three hours or more on social media a day, they face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms. And by the way, the average amount of use is about five hours a day among kids. Many parents ask me, 'Hey, if everyone's using this, how could it be harmful?' or 'If it's free and open for everyone to use, you know, if there were really harms why wouldn't someone have done something about this?' And that is a scary part, is that there are real harms that are occurring to our kids, but it just seems like a normal part of everyday living and that's part of what we've got to, to re redo our thinking on is to recognize that as common as this is, there are real harms and our kids are telling us about these harms. Everywhere I go, kids themselves bring up social media as what's something that's contributing to their mental health struggles. They talk about the harmful content that they're being exposed to. They talk about the just extraordinary culture of comparison that is accelerated on social media where you're comparing yourself, not just to thousands of other people, but even to stuff that's not real, the touched up images and you're constantly feeling worse about yourself. But the third piece that they talk about a lot is how addictive social media is, you know, nearly a third of adolescents say that they feel addicted to social media. But what they are subject to are these platforms that are designed by the best product engineers in the world with cutting edge neuroscience, which by some of the best resource companies in the world to figure out how to keep you on as long as possible. And so that makes the social media environment particularly dangerous for kids

Drew on Using a Phone Box with Her Daughter's Friends & Finding the Balance

https://www.instagram.com/p/DA01Jg0uE4c/

Drew: I've worked really closely with my kids on this. They don't have cell phones, but when my friends, my kids friends come over, I let them play for a while. I, their parents allow them to have phones. So I, I allow it for a little while and then I bring out, I go, ok, everybody, here's the phone box, all the kids throw their phones in there and then I put it away and these kids are now telling their parents who are my mom friends. They're like, I kinda like it when she takes the phone away. It just like, forces me to stop playing on it. And I was so relieved because you feel nervous as a parent to step in with other children. But it's ok if that's the policy in your home, you can find the balance.

Vivek Murthy on Writing His New York Times Op-Ed & Policies He Wants To Implement

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/g6vEUPlmqGY8
Drew: What was your goal that day, pushing send to your letter, open letter in the New York Times and putting the warning labels on?

Vivek: Well, quite simply my, my goal was to make sure that we protect our kids from the harms of social media. But I also wanted changes made to make social media safer. And that's where I called for a series of policy changes for including reducing you know, the addictive features that we have on these and protecting kids from them, protecting kids from harmful content online and also making sure that companies are transparent with the data, the information they have about the impact of their platforms on our kids mental health. But the bottom line is that we've got to get parents and kids some help here. What we've done is we've put the entire responsibility on the shoulders of parents. And we've said, hey, even though you didn't grow up with this technology, even though it's rapidly evolving, go ahead and manage it, figure it out somehow and, and that's just frankly unfair. So that's where these, these guard rails really come in is we've got to make the job easier for parents. We don't with cars, for example, we don't tell a parent when their kids about to start driving, we don't say you know what, go get a car, check out the brakes yourself, test out the frame, make sure it's crash worthy, make sure by the way that the engine it works as well, make sure everything is ok about the car and then put your kid in it and by the way, if you miss something it's on you, we don't do that. We say cars are complex, let's put safety standards in place.So that as a parent, when you get a car for your kids and put your kid in a car, you know, it's been crash tested, it's got seatbelts, it's got airbags, it's safe for your child. That's what we have to do with social media. We can't continue to put it on parents.

Drew Calls on Companies To Create A Safer Device For Our Kids

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/4lv2HtwOZgh8

Drew: I have a very taboo question, but you are the person to ask. Now there is a major push for parents to have their kids have access to phones in schools because of the epidemic in our country of school shootings. I believe that all children should have phones. I think what we've come, what I've really come to realize is there's a difference between a phone and a smartphone. And so I'm wondering, is there any hope, any company out there, anyone I'm telling you, you got a business model and a margin that is gonna blow up because we're all looking for this, where and who is going to create something that is a phone that maybe takes the best of technology, the tech talk track, and music maps, memories, memories being photos.

But if we could design an actual device that we could unify behind, where is that device? I'm begging everyone to make it.

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