You may soon be greeted by a pop-up warning you of the potential mental health risks associated with your social media app of choice if the new Stop the Scroll Act gets passed into law.
Senators John Fetterman and Katie Britt have introduced a bipartisan bill, the Stop the Scroll Act, aimed at mitigating the potential mental health risks associated with social media use, particularly among children and teenagers.
The legislation seeks to implement mandatory warning labels on social media platforms, alerting users to the potential mental health risks associated with their use.
This move comes amid increasing scrutiny of social media’s influence on youth mental well-being. The proposed legislation directly responds to a call to action by the Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, who, in June 2024, urged Congress to mandate such warnings, likening them to those found on tobacco products.
Murthy has repeatedly cautioned that excessive social media use among adolescents is linked to a higher risk of anxiety, depression, and body image issues.
In a June 17 opinion piece in The New York Times Murthy said: “The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency — and social media has emerged as an important contributor. 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.”
In an opinion piece for Newsweek on July 19, psychologist Navit Schechter talked about the devastating impact of doomscrolling, describing how she “worked with many teenagers who fell into hours of doomscrolling after school, as a respite—and way of drowning out—the stress they experienced at school and the negative, self-attacking thoughts they were having about themselves as a result.”
The Stop the Scroll Act mandates that warning labels, designed by the Surgeon General and enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), be prominently displayed each time a user accesses a social media platform from a server within the United States.
The bill also stipulates that these labels provide links to mental health resources, including national suicide prevention and crisis hotlines.
How would it look? Senators Fetterman and Britt explained in a statement that “the warning would appear in a pop-up box format upon opening a social media platform” and “each user would then need to acknowledge the potential mental health risks in order to proceed to use the platform. The warning label could not be hidden or obscured, and its exact language would adhere to requirements established by the Surgeon General.”
Because the Surgeon General will determine the final language, the exact phrasing of the warning labels is still unknown but the Act does require certain content. The labels must warn users about the “potential negative mental health impacts of accessing the social media platform.” This includes risks like exposure to bullying, online harassment and abuse, discrimination, and child sexual exploitation.
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They must also directly link users to resources addressing these mental health impacts, including a national suicide prevention hotline’s website and phone number, like the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
It is known that it will include these elements:
- Prominent display: the warnings must appear as a pop-up box every time a user accesses the platform from a U.S. server. This ensures users can’t miss them.
- Direct acknowledgment: the pop-up can’t be dismissed until the user takes an action to acknowledge the potential harms. Only then can they proceed to the platform.
- No hiding or obscuring: the Act specifically forbids platforms from burying the warnings within lengthy terms and conditions, surrounding them with extraneous information to make them less noticeable, or allowing users to permanently disable the warning pop-up.
Both senators have underscored the urgency of addressing this issue, framing it as a parental responsibility that transcends political divides.
Senator Fetterman, who has been vocal about his own struggles with depression, emphasized the need to confront the potentially harmful effects of unchecked social media use. He has previously shared how social media exacerbated his depression following his Senate victory in 2022 and has advocated for online safety reforms.
“As a dad to three young kids, I feel a duty to address how dangerous unchecked social media can be for our mental health. The evidence is right in front of us—addiction, anxiety, depression, and suicide are on the rise, and it’s directly tied to these platforms,” said Fetterman.
Senator Britt echoed these sentiments, characterizing the youth mental health crisis as a pressing national concern demanding immediate action. “Equipped with the knowledge of the dangers and empowered with the resources to address it, this simple solution will help parents and kids thrive,” added Britt.
Newsweek reached out for comment to Senators Fetterman and Britt via contact forms on their official senate websites.
However, Murthy himself has argued that warning labels alone are insufficient to tackle the multifaceted issue of social media’s impact on mental health. In his opinion piece he stated: “To be clear, a warning label would not, on its own, make social media safe for young people … the measures should prevent platforms from collecting sensitive data.”
Instagram has announced its own safeguards for adolescents using the social media platform. Teen Accounts renders all accounts for under-18s private by default and includes messaging restrictions, time-use reminders and filters on content and offensive words designed to tackle bullying. It also added more parental controls and a ‘sleep mode’ muting all notifications between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.
Newsweek reached out via email to Instagram, Snap, and TikTok for comment on the Stop the Scroll act.
