A warning issued on Tuesday by the US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, hinted at an issue that has worried American parents for years: the negative effects of social media on the mental health of young people.
These types of public health advisories are infrequent, but sometimes become turning points in American life.
Cigarettes
It took a surgeon general’s report in 1964 and decades of ensuing effort to turn smoking in America from a glamorous habit to one with deadly consequences.
Annual per capita cigarette consumption in the United States rose from 54 cigarettes in 1900 to more than 4,000 cigarettes in 1963 when early research suggested links between smoking and cancer.
This prompted Dr. Luther L. Terry, Surgeon General under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, to issue a historical report on the health risks and consequences of smoking in 1964.
Dr Terry described the crisis as a “national concern”.
The fallout was quick. In 1965, Congress required that all cigarette packages distributed in the United States carry a health warning. In 1970, cigarette advertising on television and radio was banned.
Tobacco continued to be the target of general surgeons, who later highlighted concerns about secondhand smoke and tobacco promotions targeting children. And in 2016, Dr. Murthy published a full report who called e-cigarettes and tobacco vaping a “major health concern”.
AIDS
Dr. C. Everett Koopthe surgeon general under President Reagan, has been credited with changing the public discourse around the HIV/AIDS epidemic during the 1980s. In 1986, he published a generational report on AIDS. In plain language, the report discusses risk factors and ways to protect yourself, including using condoms for safer sex.
But a candid discussion of sexual matters later tripped up a surgeon general who served under President Bill Clinton, Dr. Joycelyn Elders. Although her efforts to expand access to health screenings and sex education were hailed by some, she resigned under pressure in 1994 after proposing the distributing contraceptives in schools and condoning teaching children about masturbation as a way to prevent HIV transmission, among other views that have angered conservatives.
Violence on TV and in video games
In 1972, Dr. Jesse L. Steinfeld, surgeon general under President Richard Nixon, called for “appropriate and immediate corrective action” after a report found a “uniformly negative effect” about children who watch television violence.
Drunk driving
In the late 1980s, the numbers were startling: About 25,000 people in the United States died each year in alcohol-related traffic crashes.
In one of his last acts as Surgeon General, Dr Koop has called for tough new blood alcohol standards for drivers in 1989, as well as an increase in taxes on alcoholic beverages and a restriction on the advertising of alcoholic beverages. He also called for the abolition of happy hours and the immediate suspension of any licensed driver found to be above the legal limit.
Obesity
At the turn of this century, some 300,000 Americans were dying from a disease caused or worsened by obesity, prompting Dr. David Satcher, Surgeon General under President Clinton, in 2001 to call for major measures to act on what he described as an epidemic.
But the crisis only grew. From 1999 to 2017, the prevalence of obesity in the United States increased from 30% to 42%, and severe obesity increased from 5% to 9%, according to the CDC.
Gun violence and loneliness
Social networks are not the only concern of the current surgeon general. Dr. Murthy also called gun violence in America a public health problem and more recently an epidemic.
He called for more research and government intervention. Former General Surgeons and researchers have also called for a policy change focused on treating gun violence as a public health crisis. Nearly 50,000 Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2021, more than any other year on record, according to the CDC. It is the leading cause of death among children in the United States.
And earlier this month, Dr Murthy posted a general surgeon’s advice and a new framework to address “the public health crisis of loneliness, isolation and lack of connection in our country.” This trend has been amplified by the coronavirus pandemic, he said.
The physical health consequences of poor or insufficient connection include higher risks of other health problems.
Here are his tips for feeling less alone.
Notably, the Loneliness Report does not recommend social media as a form of connection and urges Americans to ensure that digital interactions do “not interfere with meaningful and healing connection.”