The Social Media Health and Safety Petition

Although cyber-stalking and data privacy are relevant issues, this petition focuses on mental, cultural, and physical health issues regarding social media and interactive applications.

Some issues include:

These topics are rarely talked about and are the fundamental issues behind the severe cases of buzzing pockets, the frantic urge to hide your self behind a screen, the alarming rise of social anxiety and depression. Social Media is addicting, no doubt about it. The same way tobacco uses nicotine, social media and interactive application algorithms use likes and user interactions to make their products more attractive and addictive.

It is important for businesses to acknowledge that their products are extremely addictive and that too much of anything is bad for you. Children are getting exposed to these addictive technologies alarmingly early and therefore may not be able to take the world as it is and live through the volatile lenses of the digital world.

As with any new technology, we must consider the ethics behind its development or use. Therefore the signers of this petition urge companies such as Facebook, Snap, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, and Reddit come together to develop industry wide health/safety conventions in order to recognize that their users are their most valuable assets and that it is their number one priority to protect their users from possible current and future threats.

The signers of this petition suggest the following general solutions:

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