Daily Herald opinion: Surgeon general's report emphasizes urgency of social media safety standards for the young

This editorial is a consensus opinion of the Daily Herald Editorial Board.

The U.S. surgeon general's advisory calling attention to potential mental health consequences for young people who use social media should come as a surprise to no one. From serious health researchers to casual everyday observers, people have been fretting for years about the impact of social media use on young minds.

Older minds, too, for that matter, but Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy's detailed, 19-page advisory released Tuesday specifically declares we do not yet have not enough evidence "to determine if social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents" and cites "the growing body of research" suggesting it is not.

Such observations surely must raise a discomfort level for parents that is already high. They also should drive more intense conversations among researchers, policy makers and social media companies themselves. That, in fact, is a particularly important objective of the report, which notes that, by and large, the social media industry has escaped the kind of rigorous "safety-first approach" expected of toy manufacturers, medicine companies or "other sectors that have widespread adoption and impact on children."

The role of parents in monitoring and controlling their children's social media use and impact cannot be denied, of course. But for too long, the complexities of that oversight have left parents with a sense of impotence, while government and industry spend more time on hand wringing and shoulder shrugging.

Murthy's report shifts the focus of the conversation in an important direction, calling for stronger standards on health and privacy, stricter limits on access for young people, better data sharing from tech companies, broader education on safe uses of social media and increased funding for research.

These are important considerations, many of them featured in a White House fact sheet, also released Tuesday, describing a Health and Human Services Department task force established to study social media's health impacts on minors, Education Department initiatives to increase social media literacy among the young, Commerce Department efforts to prevent online harassment and additional efforts focusing on child sexual abuse.

These are decent starts, all. But they echo with too-frequent hollow rings of task forces, reports and studies and too-infrequent demands for practical actions. Study and action are inextricably linked, of course, but in light of a Pew Research study in which 95% of teens report regular use of social media and more than a third say they use at least one of the top five platforms "almost constantly," the case for urgency cannot be overstated.

We certainly would expect clear, specific standards of safety for any toy, tool, candy or medicine used almost universally by children and adolescents. As the surgeon general emphasizes, it's fast becoming timing for less talk and more action in establishing them for social media.