Labels can be profoundly helpful in many instances. Nutrition information, brands, and medicine dosages, to name just a few, are all communicated to customers through the assistance of easily digestible labels. However, some things involve far more nuance than a simple label can communicate. Social media, an unavoidable feature of modernity, is one such case. New York and Minnesota lawmakers just passed legislation to mandate warning labels on social media sites. Not only are these requirements just plain stupid, they also fail to capture the nuance of the risks and rewards of social media while eroding Constitutionally protected speech and discouraging free market innovation.

In New York, Senate Bill S4505 is awaiting the governor’s signature and would require social media sites to display warnings at the point of user access. The bill responds to Surgeon General Vivek Murphy’s suggestion from nearly a year ago that the risks associated with these sites warrants a surgeon general’s warning label. A similar bill has passed in Minnesota and is awaiting Governor Tim Walz’s signature. The Minnesota legislation requires that users acknowledge the warning every time they open the app/site.

Like previous efforts to regulate social media in the name of “children’s safety,” these bills may be well intentioned but lack foresight and legitimacy. Warning labels like these are typically reserved for physical products and are intended to prevent deception about the risks of the product. The labels in question are not science-based, objective solutions that offer truth to users confused about what social media is. Evidence and data around the impact of social media on health is inconclusive. As outlined in the Pelican Institute’s comprehensive parent’s guide to social media, understanding the available research is important. Social media can both yield benefits like community, education, and otherwise inaccessible resources and present detriments, like addiction and mental health challenges. Factors outside of actual media usage can exacerbate negative impacts or increase the likelihood of positive experiences. In short, the effects of social media usage are far more nuanced than a warning label can capture.

Social media is also more complex than a physical product, like a cigarette, because it hosts the free speech of millions of Americans. Requiring warnings and barriers to dissuade access has far reaching implications for Constitutionally protected rights. Mike Masnick provided a helpful analogy in his writing for TechDirt: “Imagine if the government required bookstores to post warnings that ‘reading may be addictive and harmful to your mental health’ or forced newspapers to print disclaimers that ‘consuming news may increase anxiety.’ That’s essentially what these laws are doing—compelling platforms to denounce the very speech they host.”

Another potential unintended consequence of the warning labels is the slow erosion of market incentives for independent improvement from social media companies. New York and Minnesota’s warnings send a strong message: social media is bad and there’s no point in trying to improve the user experience; turn away now! This ignores the stunning, free market-driven progress that is changing the social media landscape. Over the last year, efforts from technology and social media companies specifically have intensified to provide tools and solutions to parents eager to develop a social media game plan for their family. Meta’s Instagram introduced teen accounts, which allow increased oversight and transparency between kids and their caregivers. Other third-party options exist to create customizable controls and settings that meet each family’s individual needs. A warning label on social media sites puts them in a box where there is little room for improvement or responding to the needs of the market.

There are many occasions when labels are helpful and necessary. Logging onto your favorite social media platform is not one of them. Warning labels are an oversimplified solution to a complex problem. A flashy label can never achieve what the free market, determined innovators, and empowered families can.

 

Links to Learn More

Warning: Government Overreach – Pelican Policy

Warning: These social media rules will erode civil liberties-Reason

Warning: NY & Minnesota’s Social Media Warning Label Laws Are Unconstitutional | Techdirt