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The warning comes in the form of a U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory “on the Harms of Screen Use [sic],” issued in May by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a document that Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Stephanie Haridopolos described as “a great success” and “an opportunity of a lifetime and the capstone of my career to even be the architect of this advisory.”
According to the Daily Caller, Haridopolos, who is currently performing some of the U.S. Surgeon General’s duties while the post awaits Senate confirmation of President Donald Trump’s nominee, Dr. Nicole Saphier, sees the advisory as a central pillar in the broader Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda being advanced by the administration.
August 17, 2026
Haridopolos, a 53-year-old physician and wife of Republican Florida Rep. Mike Haridopolos, said her office could not afford to delay the warning any longer given the accelerating harms she believes are linked to children’s digital habits. “We searched all of the body of evidence, compiled it all in one place,” she said, explaining that the advisory was built on a comprehensive review of current research rather than ideological speculation.
The response from experts and stakeholders, she argued, has been overwhelmingly supportive of the effort to sound the alarm. “Pretty much ubiquitously, we are seeing consensus approval on this document where people are like, ‘Yes, this is a problem. Please let us know what we can do about it,’” she added, suggesting that even in a polarized era there is broad agreement that children’s health should not be sacrificed on the altar of Big Tech convenience.
HHS deliberately chose to highlight both the physical and psychological consequences of excessive screen exposure, rather than treating it as a narrow or niche concern. Haridopolos pointed to rising rates of obesity, nearsightedness, mental health struggles and behavioral issues as interconnected symptoms of a culture that has allowed digital devices to displace traditional childhood activities, from outdoor play to face-to-face interaction.
On vision alone, the numbers are sobering and, in her view, deeply troubling for any serious public health agenda. Addressing the risk of myopia, she cited estimates indicating that, by 2050, nearly 40% of the world’s children and adolescents could be nearsighted if current patterns of screen use and indoor lifestyles continue unchecked.
Haridopolos tied this trend directly to the way children now engage with technology and their environment. Young people, she said, “unfortunately are having close screens and not getting outside, getting the sunlight in their eyes,” a shift that undermines normal visual development and sets the stage for lifelong complications.
“Really, you need to get one or two hours of sunlight on your eyes and look on the horizon,” she told the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF). “Look past at least 20 feet away and not have the strain on your eyes,” she added, underscoring a simple, low-cost preventive measure that stands in stark contrast to the high-tech, high-cost interventions that often dominate modern medicine.
The stakes, she warned, go far beyond the inconvenience of needing glasses. She stressed that myopia will be a “big problem” for “future public health initiatives” because the condition often carries serious comorbidities, including macular degeneration, which affects the small part of the retina responsible for sharp, straight-ahead vision and can lead to significant disability later in life.
Haridopolos also argued that the explosion of screen devices in the hands of American children has not delivered the promised educational revolution touted by Silicon Valley and many progressive educators. Instead, she said, it has contributed to “poor academic outcomes,” and the much-hyped introduction of tablets and laptops into classrooms has “actually backfired.”
“They thought that tech ed[ucation] was going to be a good thing,” she told the DCNF, recalling the bipartisan enthusiasm that once surrounded “21st-century learning” initiatives. “And we’re seeing that now we have problems with neurocognitive delays, language delays, speech issues … executive function,” she continued, linking the overuse of interactive screens to developmental setbacks that conservative critics of ed-tech have warned about for years.
“So, I think that we need to roll back, especially with the very young,” she said, arguing for a reset that prioritizes human interaction and traditional learning over digital gimmicks. “Giving them these interactive screens that keep their attention, unfortunately get their brains wired in the wrong way and then get them addicted to the hits with the short-form videos,” she added, describing a cycle of instant gratification that undermines attention span and self-control.
To avoid leaving parents and communities with only a list of problems, Haridopolos emphasized that the May advisory was accompanied by a practical toolkit aimed at a broad range of stakeholders. The resources, she said, are designed for parents, educators, policymakers, researchers, tech companies and providers, reflecting an understanding that the screen crisis is cultural and structural, not merely a matter of individual willpower.
“We describe the harms, but then we also say, ‘This is what you could do about it,’” she explained, framing the advisory as both a warning and a roadmap. “What could you do to fix the problem with best-practice evidence guidelines right now?” she asked, stressing that the administration wants to empower families and local institutions rather than impose a one-size-fits-all federal mandate.
Haridopolos said HHS is “really proud of the document” and hopes it will serve “as a citation for future policies,” particularly as lawmakers and school boards reconsider the rush to digitize childhood. She added that her department will convene a Sept. 1 symposium with experts and panelists to discuss the advisory in depth, hinting that HHS will “be making some announcements that day, which will be great,” a signal that further conservative-leaning reforms may be on the way.
The physician also addressed a concern many parents quietly harbor: how to push back against the screen-saturated culture without provoking constant conflict at home. She believes that once mothers and fathers fully grasp the risks, they will be more willing to set firm boundaries, even if it means saying no to the latest gadget or app.
“The parents, I think, when they know the harms, I think they want what’s best for their children, to be honest,” said Haridopolos, herself a mother of three. “So maybe they just don’t know that they’re increasing the problems of academia. Maybe they don’t know that it’s going to cause problems with their eyesight. If they did, maybe they would think twice,” she added, suggesting that informed parents are natural allies in a preventive health strategy.
She underscored that age matters greatly when it comes to screen exposure and that younger children are particularly vulnerable to harm. The doctor told the DCNF that infants and toddlers under 18 months should have no access to screen devices at all, while children under six should be limited to a maximum of one hour of screen time per day “outside of what you need for education,” a standard that sharply contrasts with the permissive norms encouraged by many tech companies.
She noted that this daily non-educational maximum only rises to two hours for children between the ages of six and 18, a guideline that would require many families to rethink their routines. “There’s a difference between looking something up for purpose versus not having a purpose and doomscrolling for no intent,” Haridopolos stressed, drawing a clear line between productive, intentional use and mindless consumption.
Haridopolos also distinguished between traditional television and the handheld devices that now dominate children’s lives. The HHS official said that exposure to phones and tablets is “slightly different” because these devices are typically held close to the face and used in highly stimulating, interactive ways, whereas TV is usually watched at a distance and often in a more passive, family-centered setting.
Additionally, she emphasized that children today primarily use handheld devices to watch short-form videos that deliver rapid-fire dopamine hits, eroding their ability to focus and retain information. This pattern, she warned, is not just a matter of taste or generational preference but a neurological issue that can “decrease their attention span and memory capacity,” with long-term consequences for learning and work.
“And there’s so many harms outside of just the development of the brain that kids are being exposed to online,” Haridopolos continued, broadening the indictment beyond cognitive effects. “They have higher risk of drugs, cyberbullying. Unfortunately, sexploitation, the viral challenges, the teen takeovers, the just bad behavior associated with it. And the mental health, their depression and anxiety and possibly suicide,” she said, listing a series of dangers that many parents and conservative commentators have been sounding the alarm about for years.
Despite the gravity of these concerns, Haridopolos was careful to say that the administration is not calling for a Luddite rejection of modern tools. “We’re not saying technology shouldn’t be embraced. We should do it in a responsible way with digital citizenship,” she added, framing the issue as one of stewardship and self-governance rather than blanket prohibition.
“We should do it in a way where we’re learning, we’re using it to our advantage, but it’s not consuming us and crowding out normal activities in life,” she said, echoing a broader conservative theme that technology should serve human flourishing, not replace it. That balance, she suggested, is at the heart of the MAHA movement being championed by Secretary Kennedy and the Trump administration.
When asked what the Make America Healthy Again initiative meant to her personally, Haridopolos said it is fundamentally about “thinking preventative.” “As a family medicine physician, mother of three, I always thought about ‘How do I prevent disease?’ And so that was empowering patients with knowledge to live a healthy lifestyle and not just a knee-jerk reaction to prescription medication,” she said, articulating a philosophy that favors personal responsibility and informed choice over reflexive dependence on pharmaceutical solutions.
“Of course, it’s necessary sometimes, but I’d much rather give you the tools for success by educating you on the best practices of a healthy lifestyle and then you making those decisions,” she added, aligning her approach with a conservative emphasis on individual agency and limited government intrusion. In her own practice, she said, that meant challenging patients to change their habits rather than simply writing a script.
“If someone came into my office and had a really high triglyceride level, I would say first, instead of just giving them a prescription for gemfibrozil, which would lower their triglycerides, I’d say, ‘What are you eating in the day?’ Let’s talk about that,” the doctor stated, illustrating how lifestyle counseling can precede and sometimes replace medication. That same preventive mindset, she argued, now informs HHS’s broader policy moves under Kennedy’s leadership.
She pointed to the department’s decision in January to flip the old government food pyramid “upside down” as a concrete example of that shift. The new guidance emphasizes higher protein intake over carbohydrates and deemphasizes ultra-processed foods, a reversal of decades of nutrition advice that many conservatives and independent experts have long criticized as politically driven and out of step with emerging science.
Haridopolos said that reform, combined with the screen use advisory and Kennedy’s June decision to restore the Presidential Fitness Test for children, forms a coherent strategy aimed at rebuilding a culture of health from the ground up. Taken together, she argued, these measures “will equal, hopefully in the future, us having less chronic disease, a healthier nation that has increased lifespan, but more importantly, health span, disease free,” a goal that resonates with taxpayers tired of funding an ever-expanding “sick care” system.
This, she said, “will then help our economy with spending less on chronic diseases and sick care, and focusing more on actually investing in upstream healthcare.” For Haridopolos and her colleagues, reining in children’s screen use, restoring physical fitness, and correcting failed nutrition dogmas are not isolated projects but part of a broader conservative effort to revive personal responsibility, strengthen families, and reduce the long-term burden on the federal government by cultivating a healthier, more self-reliant citizenry.
