Randomized trial demonstrates that health warnings discourage platform use and raise harm awareness among youth, indicating regulatory warnings could mitigate digital harms.
Key Points
To test whether teenagers and young adults perceive that health warning labels discourage social media use and enhance awareness of related harms.
Online within-participants randomized clinical trial (NCT07199660) conducted in December 2025 among 1012 US individuals aged 13 to 29 years.
Participants viewed 15 randomized mock social media messages: 13 health warnings covering specific harms (e.g., depression, anxiety, body image), 1 screen time break warning, and 1 neutral control message.
Outcomes were rated on a 1 to 5 scale for perceived message effectiveness in discouraging use (primary) and harm awareness (secondary), analyzed using linear mixed models to calculate average differential effects (ADEs).
All health warnings and the screen time break warning were perceived as more effective at discouraging use than control (ADEs, 0.32 [95% CI, 0.24 to 0.41] to 0.62 [95% CI, 0.53 to 0.71]); health warnings outperformed the screen time break warning (ADEs, 0.16 [95% CI, 0.08 to 0.24] to 0.30 [95% CI, 0.22 to 0.37]), except for the addiction warning (ADE, 0.07 [95% CI, −0.004 to 0.14]).
All warnings increased harm awareness more than the control message (ADEs, 0.19 [95% CI, 0.10 to 0.28] to 0.63 [95% CI, 0.54 to 0.72]), and all health warnings increased awareness more than the screen time break warning (ADEs, 0.21 [95% CI, 0.13 to 0.28] to 0.44 [95% CI, 0.36 to 0.52]).