NBC’s 11th Hour: Surgeon General Warns About Teens on Social Media (ft. Jen Golbeck)

UMD INFO Staff - June 2, 2023

Professor Jen Golbeck joins a panel of guests on the 11th Hour to address social media’s influence on young people's mental health.

Screenshot of Jen Golbeck on MSNBC's 11th Hour program

A new Surgeon General report warns that social media is leading to an increase in stress, anxiety, and mental health issues among youth. During a segment on the 11th Hour on MSNBC, host Stephanie Ruhle interviewed College of Information Studies Professor Jen Golbeck about the dire warning. In the report, the Surgeon General calls on tech companies to do more to address the issue. “Social media companies like to say that they’re going to self-regulate and that they’re going to look as an industry at what’s going on, but the fact is that they don’t do anything to make things better unless they’re really pushed very hard,” Golbeck says. “There’s not a lot of  incentive for self-regulation because there is a lot of money to be made, and there’s very little distinction being drawn between how things like the algorithms that push content at us that engages us differs between children and adults on these platforms.”

Watch the news segment here. Published on May 24, 2023 by MSNBC