Dr. Vivek Murthy

And so you put all of this together and you have to ask yourself the same question, I think, in medicine we ask ourselves all the time, which is how do you balance risk and benefit?

And I think what we're seeing is that the risks of social media have been dramatically underplayed and they're far more significant for young people, and I would say even for adults, than we have recognized.

And the benefits we hoped for in terms of closer friendships and tighter communities have been dramatically overstated.

It's not to say, again, that there are no benefits at all to some people, but we've got to ask ourselves, is it a net benefit in our lives?

Are we still on social media because we are worried that maybe we'll be left out if we're not?

I'll lastly just tell you this.

I have encountered many people who have tried to quit social media.

Those who have

It's extremely hard for me to think of a single person who has regretted that decision.

Again, it's not to say that no one should ever be on social media, but I think especially when it comes to our kids, I think we have to ask ourselves the question, do we really understand the risks and are those risks worth it?

any benefits that we may see.

And I'll tell you that for my kids, and what I advise parents across the board to do based on the data that I've examined, and more and more data has continued to come out since our report, is I don't think that giving your kids access to social media at the age of 13 is a good idea.

There are safety standards that are put in place that actually ensure that companies are disclosing the full effects and data they have on the health impacts of their platforms on kids.

For my kids in particular, I don't feel comfortable with them being on these platforms.

We require companies to disclose the safety data on a lot of things that kids use, food, toys, et cetera.

Yet on a platform that is relatively ubiquitous among young people with 95% plus saying they've used social media, somehow our lawmakers have failed to require any type of reasonable safety standards.

And to me, that's a red flag as a parent.

So here are a couple of things that I think that we can do.

Number one is we can take the first step of trying to create tech-free zones in our life, right?

So we could say, for example, that our time at dinner