Research report: Health warnings could reduce young people’s social media use, Stanford Medicine study finds

An online randomized experiment involving 1,012 teenagers and young adults found that pop-up warnings about the potential health harms of social media were rated as more effective at discouraging use than a control message about seatbelt safety. Participants also reported that the warnings increased their awareness of possible harms, with messages addressing overall mental health, depression and anxiety receiving the strongest responses. The survey experiment, published Sept.

4, 2026, in JAMA Health Forum, tested how warning wording affected immediate perceptions; it did not directly measure whether participants subsequently spent less time on social media. The Stanford Medicine research examined a policy idea modeled on warning labels used for tobacco, alcohol and other products associated with health risks: presenting information about potential harm at the point when people encounter a product or service. The study was inspired by a 2024 call from then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy for health warning labels on social media.

California, Colorado, Minnesota and New York have since enacted legislation requiring such warnings, while Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania have considered related proposals. California’s law is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2027, and it specifies particular warning language; the laws cited in the release generally do not prescribe equivalent wording.

“We haven’t known what warnings for social media should say, or if they’re promising for changing behavior,” said lead study author Anna Grummon, PhD, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Stanford University. “Sometimes, subtle changes to warnings really matter.” The experiment was designed to compare possible messages and identify which were perceived as more effective. Senior author Thomas Robinson, MD, the Irving Schulman, MD, Professor in Child Health at Stanford, said teens and young adults consistently reported that the warnings they saw would reduce their social media use compared with the control.

The findings therefore identify promising wording, but they do not settle whether exposure to such pop-ups changes behavior over time. Researchers administered an online questionnaire to 1,012 people, about half of whom were teenagers ages 13 to 17 and half young adults ages 18 to 29. The questionnaire collected demographic information and asked which social media platforms participants used.

It then displayed 15 messages in random order, each formatted to resemble an Instagram page. For every message, participants answered two questions: “How much does this message discourage you from wanting to use social media?” and “How much does this message increase your awareness of the harms of using social media?” These questions captured immediate discouragement and perceived awareness rather than objectively tracked screen time, platform choice or social media use after the questionnaire. The researchers developed two warnings for each of seven health topics: social media addiction, negative body image, sleep disruption, depression, anxiety, overall mental health harms and the fact that social media has not been proven safe for young people.

Those 14 messages formed the experimental set. Researchers also tested California’s legislatively specified warning and a screen-time-break message similar to one used on TikTok. A message about seatbelt safety, a subject relevant to young people but unrelated to social media, served as the control.

One tested message about sleep read, “SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Using social media causes sleep problems. This is bad for your health.” Another stated, “SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Social media is associated with significant mental health harms for children and young adults.” The language varied across the experimental set, allowing the researchers to assess whether warnings tied to particular health effects resonated differently from the addiction message or the screen-time-break prompt. The design focused on message content and format: all participants encountered the warnings in an online setting, and none of the questions asked whether a warning actually changed how much social media they subsequently used.

Participants rated all of the social media warning messages as more effective than the control on both discouraging use and increasing awareness of harm. They also rated every warning that mentioned a health effect, except the addiction warning, as more effective than the screen-time-break message. The warnings perceived as most effective addressed overall mental health harms, depression and anxiety.

The data did not reveal why these subjects performed best. Grummon said she could only speculate that people may recognize depression, anxiety and broader mental health consequences in themselves or in friends and therefore may care more about them; that explanation was not tested as a mechanism in the experiment. The two age groups responded similarly.

Researchers had anticipated that teenagers and young adults might react differently because their experiences with digital media occur in a rapidly changing environment, but both groups consistently said the tested messages would reduce their social media use. The result does not establish that every warning would work equally well across different age groups, settings, platforms or repeated exposures. It instead shows that the participants in both age categories perceived a broadly similar response to these messages, without supporting a conclusion that behavioral effects have been demonstrated in either group.

California’s warning also performed fairly well, with participants rating its perceived effectiveness on a par with the other health warnings despite its greater length and complexity. It states that, although social media may provide benefits for some young users, it is associated with significant mental health harms and has not been proven safe for young users. Robinson said the researchers spoke with the people who drafted the legislation to understand the rationale for the wording.

He said it was not the message the researchers would have designed, but the team believed it was designed to withstand legal scrutiny. He also noted that the warning laws discussed in the release were being challenged in litigation by the social media industry. The main limitation is the gap between what participants said they would be discouraged from doing and what they subsequently did.

The experiment measured immediate ratings, not sustained reductions in social media use, changes in platform choice or the effects of repeated pop-up exposure. Grummon said well-designed warning labels change behavior on average for substances such as tobacco and alcohol, but she emphasized that social media differs from those products: warning labels on physical products remain attached to the item, whereas the social media laws described in the release provide for warnings in a pop-up format. Researchers therefore need more extensive testing to determine whether repeated exposure affects real behavior.

The study was funded by the Stanford Maternal and Child Health Research Institute and the Department of Pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, with researchers from the University of North Carolina and the University of California, Davis also contributing.

Subject of Research: Testing social media health-warning wording in an online experiment with teenagers and young adults

Article Title: Health warnings could reduce young people’s social media use, Stanford Medicine study finds

Article References: Health warnings could reduce young people’s social media use, Stanford Medicine study finds. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

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Keywords: social media, health warnings, teenagers, young adults, mental health, survey experiment, warning wording, behavioral research, depression, anxiety, Health, warnings