This story was originally produced by The Keene Sentinel. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the Granite State News Collaborative.
New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella has joined with his counterparts nationwide in urging Congress to require companies to put warnings on their social media websites describing dangers posed to young people.
Formella, who is president-elect of the National Association of Attorneys General, and attorneys general from 41 other states, sent a letter Sept. 9 to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The letter lends support to U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s call for a warning label stating that use of social media is associated with mental health harms for adolescents.
“As State Attorneys General, we sometimes disagree about important issues, but all of us share an abiding concern for the safety of the kids in our jurisdictions — and algorithm-driven social media platforms threaten that safety,” the letter states.
“A growing body of research links young people’s use of those social media platforms to a variety of serious psychological harms, including depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.”
In a news release Thursday, Formella said, “New Hampshire children and their families deserve to know about the harms that social media platforms can cause. Congress should require these platforms to clearly tell their users about those harms as one step to help protect kids from the predatory practices of social media.”
Last October, Formella filed a lawsuit along with 44 other states against Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, alleging the company wasn’t adequately protecting its users from scammers who compromise accounts and steal data.
In June, he sued TikTok Inc. in Merrimack County Superior Court, alleging violations of the state’s consumer protection laws and a failure to address harms posed to children by addictive social media platforms.
In a June 17 op-ed in The New York Times, the surgeon general said there is a mental health crisis among young people.
“Adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms, and the average daily use in this age group, as of the summer of 2023, was 4.8 hours,” he said.
“Additionally, nearly half of adolescents say social media makes them feel worse about their bodies.”
Meta said in a blog post Thursday that it has established a new program that allows tech companies to share information about violative content about suicide or self-harm in order to stop it from spreading across different platforms.
In January, the company announced it would begin removing some sensitive and age-inappropriate content from teenagers’ feeds.
It has also held a series of workshops billed as empowering parents “to confidently manage their teens’ usage of smartphones and devices.”
