WASHINGTON — Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is issuing a U.S. surgeon general’s advisory urging families, schools, and providers to reduce children’s screen time, according to a draft of the report reviewed by STAT.
The report, which comes from the surgeon general’s office even though there is no Senate-confirmed nominee, calls on parents, schools, and all levels of government to work together to shift the use of devices with screens, saying some patterns of use “can pose real harm to children.”
The report offers a long wish list of actions from policymakers, industry, and parents — but stops short of prescriptive language or laying out plans to make those changes a reality.
Tech companies, for example, could design their products “for user well-being, not engagement,” according to the report, which asks them to display warnings about the harms of screen time before each use and nudge users to stop using the products. But there is no roadmap included for how industry giants might be pushed to make such changes.
Still, the report, “Surgeon General’s Warning on the Harms of Screen Use,” speaks to a broad bipartisan concern about the impact of technology on youth mental health. This is not the first time the surgeon general’s office has addressed such issues: under the Biden administration, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for a warning label on social media and released an advisory about its potential mental health risks for young people.
