Reactions to Social Media Warning Labels Among Teens and Young Adults

Stanford University

Status

Not yet enrolling

Conditions

Screen Time Exposure

Treatments

Behavioral: Artificial-intelligence-developed negative body image warning

Behavioral: Human-developed negative body image warning

Behavioral: Artificial-intelligence-developed warning that social media has not been proven safe

Behavioral: Human-developed mental health harms to young people warning

Behavioral: California's proposed social media warning

Behavioral: Human-developed depression and anxiety warning

Behavioral: Artificial-intelligence-developed sleep warning

Behavioral: Human-developed addiction warning

Behavioral: Control message

Behavioral: Voluntary warning

Behavioral: Artificial-intelligence-developed addiction warning

Behavioral: Human-developed sleep warning

Behavioral: Artificial-intelligence-developed mental health harms to young people warning

Behavioral: Human-developed warning that social media has not been proven safe

Behavioral: Artificial-intelligence-developed depression and anxiety warning

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT07199660

81445

Details and patient eligibility

About

The primary objective of this study is to evaluate whether social media warnings are perceived as more effective than control labels among teens and young adults, and to identify the most promising topics for social media warnings for these age groups. A secondary objective is to compare perceived message effectiveness of warnings refined using artificial intelligence (AI) vs. those not refined using AI.

Full description

Participants will complete a within-subjects online randomized experiment in which they will view and rate messages on the risk of social media use. Participants will view messages about 9 topics: 8 warning topics and 1 control topic. The 8 warning topics include 7 potential mandatory warnings (depression and anxiety, body image, addiction, sleep, mental health harms to children, not been proven safe, and California's proposed warning) and 1 voluntary warning (similar to a message used on TikTok to encourage users to take breaks). For each topic, participants will view 1-2 messages and respond to survey items about that message. All messages will be shown in random order.

Enrollment

1,000 estimated patients

Sex

All

Ages

13 to 29 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Age between 13-29 years
Reside in the United States
Able to complete a survey in English
Access to the internet

Exclusion criteria

Younger than 13 or older than 29 years
Reside outside of the United States
Unable to complete a survey in English
Lacks access to the internet

Trial design

Primary purpose

Prevention

Allocation

N/A

Interventional model

Single Group Assignment

Masking

None (Open label)

1,000 participants in 1 patient group

Warning labels

Experimental group

Description:

Participants view 15 messages in random order: 6 warning messages about social media developed by a team of human experts (1 each about 6 different topics), 6 warning messages about social media developed by artificial intelligence (1 each about the same 6 topics as the human-developed messages), an additional 1 warning message that mirrors the language proposed by the state of California, 1 voluntary warning message developed by human experts, and 1 control message.

Treatment: