Dr. Vivek Murthy

And if your goal is to keep people on your platform and keep them engaged, then you can employ all kinds of tools and tactics to keep them on, even if it's not good for their mental and physical health and well-being.

And I think sadly, that's what we have seen.

And I heard this all the time when I was traveling the country and the world as Surgeon General.

So many people have actually said that they have tried to detox or quit social media.

A lot of them have not succeeded.

But I think it's because we have, think about this, some of the best resource companies in the world

with some of the most talented product engineers in the world using cutting edge neuroscience to figure out how to get you to stay on for longer and longer.

And especially when you think about young people,

13-year-old who might be using social media and struggling to limit their usage.

And we say to them, hey, you just got to find more willpower, be more disciplined.

In the face of that, that is the definition of an unfair fight.

So I don't doubt that many people who built these platforms began many years ago with the desire to create community.

But what the data is actually telling us very clearly now

is that for many people, that experience is not translating to community.

In fact, young people tell me all the time about how social media would make them feel worse about themselves.

And there are a number of studies that have backed this up over the years.

Some of them I included in my own Surgeon General's Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health.

But young people tell us that using social media makes them feel worse about their body image as well.

Many adolescents say they feel addicted to social media.

It's impacting their sleep as well.