Impact of various media on health

The Indian telecommunication market witnessed a distortion in 2016 due to a late-entrant firm's disruptive market entry with deep-discounted pricing; however, Internet penetration marked a considerable increase. Using nationally representative cross-sectional data from the post-market disruption period and an instrumental variable strategy for identification, we estimate the impact of the Internet on the uptake of maternal and child healthcare services. We find that the Internet improves the uptake of antenatal care, institutional delivery, postnatal care, and modern contraceptive use.

An idea percolating all summer in the big national argument about social media—warning labels to help reduce the harms of online platforms to kids—has suddenly landed in Congress. Sens. Katie Britt (R-AL) and John Fetterman (D-PA) introduced a bill requiring platforms to add those labels.

Sens Katie Britt (R-AL) and John Fetterman (D-PA) introduced the Stop the Scroll Act, which would create a mental health warning label requirement for social media platforms. This bipartisan legislation would ensure all users, especially adolescents, are aware of the potential mental health risks posed by social media usage and are provided access to mental health resources. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy recently recommended a warning label be placed on social media platforms.

In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) that touched on a series of controversies, Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said it was improper for the Biden administration to have pressured Facebook to censor content in 2021 related to the coronavirus pandemic, vowing that the social-media company would reject any such future efforts. Zuckerberg wrote that senior Biden administration officials, including from the White House, had “repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a reorganization that will streamline and bolster technology, cybersecurity, data, and artificial intelligence (AI) strategy and policy functions. This reorganization will clarify and consolidate these critical functions, as follows:

Meta and the Center for Open Science (COS) opened a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a new pilot program, designed to support the study of topics related to social media use and well-being.

The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the Biden Administration's contacts with social media platforms to combat what administration officials said was misinformation. The lawsuit, spearheaded by Republican state attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana, had fared well in the lower courts, at one point resulting in an unprecedented injunction that blocked top government officials from communicating with social-media

When California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom laid out an ambitious, if hazy, plan to remove smartphones from public classrooms in the interest of kids’ safety, it marked a turnaround that would have shocked any hyper-ambitious Democratic politician from a generation ago. “Connecting kids” was once an obvious political winner.

Gov Gavin Newsom (D-CA) vowed to severely restrict the use of smartphones during the school day, a dramatic move by the nation’s largest state amid dire warnings from the Biden administration that social media harms children. Newsom’s decision comes a day after Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy warned the threat social media poses to kids is so acute that Congress should compel apps to include warning labels similar to cigarettes and alcohol. Newsom said he would work with his Democratic-dominated Legislature to pass the restrictions during the current session that ends in August.

Adolescents and young adults are facing elevated rates of mental health issues—and they're also struggling with access to the mental health care they urgently need. When young people express the need for professional help, they often encounter obstacles to seeing a therapist, such as prolonged wait times, limited local access to mental health providers, or financial barriers. In light of these barriers, young people turn to social media and digital mental health apps to attempt to fulfill their needs.