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US surgeon general wants social media warning labels

Vivek Murthy says social media increases the risk that children will experience anxiety and depression.

Writing in the New York Times, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said social media increased the risk that children would experience symptoms of anxiety and depression. Warning labels were first added to cigarette packaging in the US in 1966, after then-Surgeon General Luther L Terry published a report linking tobacco to lung cancer. Media regulator Ofcom set out new rules for tech firms in May, requiring them to have robust age-checking measures and to steer children away from "toxic" material.

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