NYC Council hearing spotlights mounting youth mental-health concerns tied to social media; officials urge research and platform changes

City health officials told a New York City Council joint hearing that social media and extended screen time are associated with worsening youth mental health and that local programs must scale prevention and services while advocating for stronger platform safeguards.

Dr. George Petite, executive deputy commissioner and director of community services at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), said local surveys and DOHMH "epidata" briefs show troubling trends: approximately 35% of public high-school students reported feeling sad or hopeless for more than two weeks in the prior year, and inequities are stark by race, gender and sexual orientation. He described the city's February 2024 lawsuit against TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat as one step and said public-health action must expand to require age-appropriate design, limits on algorithmic amplification and more transparency from platforms. "We have also urged our federal and state partners to advance legislative frameworks that hold platforms accountable," Dr. Petite said.

Marne Davidoff, assistant commissioner for the Bureau of Children, Youth, Families and Developmental Disabilities at DOHMH, told the committee that research points to both harms and benefits depending on how young people use platforms. "Potentially even more important than the amount of time on screens is how youth are using their time," she said, distinguishing active, community-oriented use from passive scrolling linked to social comparison, anxiety and body-image problems.

DOHMH highlighted data collection tools the agency already uses, including the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) and several epidata briefs, and described services such as school-based mental-health clinics, children's mobile crisis teams and Teen Space, a three-year demonstration program for teenagers. DOHMH said Teen Space registered roughly 36,000 youth in its first two years and that in the most recent year about 12% of participants identified social media as a presenting problem.

Council members asked officials about sleep effects, disengagement and whether a fixed daily time limit (one hour) would be evidence-based; officials said no single study shows that threshold and emphasized gaps in longitudinal, causal research. DOHMH urged more rigorous, local studies and called for default protections for minors on platforms.

The Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) told the committee it has talked with providers about limiting phone use during program hours and heard positive reports where providers adopted such rules, but said it has not issued a citywide ban. A DYCD official also warned that implementing certain proposed reporting or surveillance measures would require system upgrades and additional staff.

The hearing ended with calls from providers, clinicians, advocates and first responders for investments in prevention, mental-health workforce capacity, digital-literacy education and youth-led messaging — and a cautious approach to policy levers that could undermine trust between young people and community providers.

What happens next: Council members discussed several bills at the hearing, including Intro 450 and Intro 451 (research, guidance and limits for youth social-media use) and Intro 660, a contested proposal to require DYCD-funded providers to document and report social-media-related altercations; officials warned of privacy, capacity and trust risks for the latter.