Many Products Have Warning Labels, So Why Not Social Media? [OPINION]

By Lucy Bichakhchyan and Eric Harris, Minnesota Reformer

May 12, 2026

NetChoice, the trade group representing Meta, Google, X, and most major social media companies, recently sued Minnesota in federal court over a law that takes effect on July 1, 2026, requiring platforms to display a “conspicuous mental-health warning” each time a user accesses them. NetChoice argues this violates the First Amendment by compelling speech. The defendants are Attorney General Keith Ellison and Health Commissioner Brooke Cunningham.

Tobacco, alcohol, prescription drugs, vehicles, credit cards and children’s toys: Many consumer products carry a mandated warning. Social media is the rare product where the warning label is being treated as a free-speech question rather than a product-safety question. Before getting to the legal merits, it’s worth exploring what we know about the product.

In May 2023, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory stating that “We cannot conclude that social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents.” Up to 95% of teens use a platform, more than a third “almost constantly,” and frequent use has been linked to changes in the developing brain affecting impulse control and emotional regulation, according to the Surgeon General’s advisory. In June 2024, Murthy explicitly called for a warning label, which would require an act of Congress.

In March 2026, in the first social media addiction case to reach trial, a Los Angeles County jury found Meta and Google negligent in the design of Instagram and YouTube, awarded $6 million to a young woman whose use began at age 6 and concluded the platforms had failed to adequately warn users of the risks. It was one of the first times a U.S. jury accepted product-liability-style claims against social media platforms. More than 1,600 plaintiffs are part of a broader wave of federal litigation against the platforms.

The European Union’s Digital Services Act, the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act, and Australia’s under-16 restrictions all treat platforms as services subject to safety duties. California passed its own warning label law in October 2025, to take effect Jan. 1, 2027. Minnesota’s would be the first U.S. law of its kind to take effect.

I’ve spent several years in tech roles where the job is simple: keep users coming back. From inside that frame, a warning label on the app icon isn’t a minor cosmetic change. It’s friction at the highest-leverage point in the user journey: the moment of return.

On social media apps, user delight and engagement are the entire business model. Seen in this light, the lawsuit makes more sense as a defense of that business model rather than a defense of speech.

The harder question is whether warning labels work. The strongest evidence is on tobacco. Graphic cigarette warnings increase quit attempts and reduce daily consumption, particularly among less nicotine-dependent smokers, though the mechanism is more emotional than informational. The evidence on text-only warnings is more mixed. Translated to social media, that suggests a small static label on a login screen probably won’t move behavior much. A more prominent design, closer to the Surgeon General’s advisory language and visible enough to register, likely would.

Tobacco and alcohol have age limits and warning labels. Prescription medications, including stimulants used to treat ADHD, require a physician’s evaluation. Vehicles require licensing, training and parental sign-off. These layers don’t exist because every product is dangerous; they exist because society has built oversight mechanisms around products that touch minors. Social media has the lightest gating of any of them.

The Minnesota law will be tested in two different forums. The federal court will decide whether warning labels on social media survive a First Amendment challenge. The label design will determine whether it functions as informed consent or as a checkbox, just as a privacy policy does.

Whether it’s visible, frequent, and intense enough to register matters as much as the legal outcome. The lawsuit addresses only one of those two questions.

The Minnesota Reformer is an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to keeping Minnesotans informed and unearthing stories other outlets can’t or won’t tell.