Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of representatives introduced a bill in the Ohio House of Representatives that would require “addictive” social media platforms to come with warning labels when they are opened.
This comes off the heels of a high-profile ruling that found Meta, the parent company of Facebook, and Google liable for creating social media sites that were intentionally addictive and that led to mental health problems for a child.
A large body of research asserts that social media can have addictive properties and has caused problem addiction among large swaths of the general population.
In a 2021 meta-analysis of 63 studies on social media addiction, an international team of researchers found as much as a quarter of people in studies across 32 countries qualified as at least moderately addicted to social media.
Warning labels are a tried and true practice in public health prevention.
As early as 1906, the federal government was holding companies accountable for not disclosing product information to consumers.
The first required warning labels were applied to regulation of poison adopted federally in the late 1920s.
From an economic standpoint, warning labels help promote more efficient markets.
Consumers cannot make informed consumption decisions if they are not aware of the potential harms of goods.
In theory, clear labels about potential harms can protect consumers from purchasing or misusing goods and prevent both misallocation of resources and dangerous accidents.
A meta-analysis by Canadian marketing researchers of 66 studies on warning labels finds warning labels are at least somewhat effective at shifting consumer behavior.
Labels could be a tool for helping consumers control their own well-being.
Many studies have made a connection between mental health issues and social media exposure. Some researchers, however, have questioned this body of research.
A group of Norwegian researchers reviewed 79 studies on the association between social media use and mental health for adolescents.
They found that three-quarters of the studies they reviewed focused on some sort of connection between social media use and some sort of pathology.
Researchers were much more likely to ask if social media hurt than to ask if it helped.
Their takeaway: researchers are finding what they are looking for, and the literature may be more reflective of a “moral panic” perpetuated by the media than a true public health crisis.
On the other hand, some researchers are finding evidence social media use could be eating away at our economy.
A study last year by an Argentinian economist estimated that smartphone checking could be eating up as much as 13% of the Argentinian economy by cutting into productivity, with the heaviest losses coming from high-distriction jobs like office work, finance, government, and service jobs.
Personally, do I want to get a warning message shown to me every time I open TikTok on my phone? Not really.
But I understand the concern people have with social media and what it could be doing to public health and the state economy.
There may be reckoning coming soon where the public sector figures out where its place is in the regulation of social media.
I figure we still have a long way to go before we get there.
This commentary first appeared in the Ohio Capital Journal.
