Vermont Phone-Free Schools joins call to create social media warning labels

October 4, 2024  |  By Angela Arsenault and Laura Derrendinger

Over 150 independent medical professionals, parents, teachers, content experts, academic researchers, legislators and attorneys from across the country have signed a letter to congressional leadership asking for action on the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy's call for warning labels on social media products. 

Signers include author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, child psychiatrist and author Dr. Victoria Dunkley, Fairplayforkids.org founder Dr. Susan Linn, author and child and adolescent psychologist Dr. Richard Freed, attorney Laura Marquez-Garrett of the Social Media Victims Law Center, and state legislators from Vermont and Kansas. Signers also included members of the National Screen Time Action Network at Fairplay for Kids. 

Pastor Robin Junker, a leader of Vermont Phone Free Schools, reiterated Dr. Murthy's call saying, “along with other essential legislative tools to protect children from online harms, the public needs to see warning labels stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.”

Vermont doctor Rima Carlson agrees. “In my 21 years in family medicine, I have not seen this level of anxiety and depression in adolescent patients. It corresponds with the increasing hours teens spend on social media platforms. Families need to be warned of the potential adverse effect,” Carlson said. 

Vermont Phone-Free Schools is a network of Vermont parents, school board members, medical professionals, educators, school leaders and other concerned citizens working to promote safe practices and policies regarding kids' use of online and digital products. 

The Vermont group's effort follows the recent letter signed by 42 attorneys general seeking the same congressional action regarding social media labeling. In their letter, Vermont Phone-Free Schools reframes a common misconception that the science surrounding the link between youth mental health and social media is conflicted. The group argues that the conflict lies between industry profits and what is healthy for children. 

We are well beyond the point at which Congress needed to act to protect our kids from the known harms of social media. Passing legislation to require warning labels on these unsafe products is one of many steps that need to be taken now to show that regulators value people over profits. 

Mary Rodee of Potsdam, New York, lost her son Riley to suicide at age 15. Riley was a victim of sexploitation and blackmail by an anonymous internet user. “If not now, then when will the warning labels come out?” Rodee asks. “If not the surgeon general, then who? The statistics are clear, kids are being harmed. Just because it's not (always) death doesn't mean that they aren't impacted for life by the damage done and that's what surgeon general's warnings are for, right?" 

Massena (N.Y.) High School science teacher and Massena Federation of Teachers Union President Randal Freiman said that students say they can't stop scrolling through social media apps.

“They admit that quickly checking a message causes them to lose multiple hours doom scrolling. How does a teacher teach tired children who have been up to all hours of the night scrolling through social media?” Freiman said. “They are unfocused, exhausted, and training themselves to have 30-second attention spans.” 

This letter to Congress was sent on the same day that Sens. Katie Britt, R-Alabama, and Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania, introduced legislation called Stop The Scroll Act to implement a mental health warning label on social media platforms. 

Read the letter and find the form to sign it at this link. 

Williston resident Angela Arsenault is a Democratic Vermont state representative in the Chittenden-2 House district and a member of the Champlain Valley School District School Board. 

Laura Derrendinger, a parent in Middletown Springs, Vermont, has been a leading advocate for on issues regarding children’s mental health including supporting proposed state legislation to ban cellphones in Vermont schools.