Available evidence shows that, as of late 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not asserted product-style regulatory authority over social media platforms (e.g., Instagram) on the basis of mental-health or eating‑disorder harms, in any way analogous to its regulation of products like Juul.

What the FDA does regulate online is: (a) how manufacturers advertise FDA‑regulated medical products on the internet and social media, and (b) its own use of social media for public communication. FDA guidance focuses on ensuring truthful, balanced risk–benefit information in drug/device promotion on social platforms, not treating the platforms or their algorithms themselves as regulated products.(fda.gov) This is a continuation of long‑standing promotional‑advertising oversight, not a new jurisdictional move targeting social media as a public‑health product.

By contrast, concern about social media’s mental‑health impact has mainly produced non‑FDA actions:

• In May 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory on social media and youth mental health, warning of “profound risk” and urging policymakers and tech firms to protect children, but this was an advisory, not binding regulation of platforms.(integrationacademy.ahrq.gov)
• In June 2024, Murthy publicly called on Congress to require tobacco‑style warning labels on social media platforms, again highlighting harms but explicitly noting such labels would require new legislation; they have not been federally mandated to date.(apnews.com)
• Multiple state laws now attempt to regulate youth social media use and to require mental‑health warning labels (e.g., Colorado’s HB 24‑1136 and similar California measures), typically enforced by state attorneys general, not federal health regulators—and some have already been blocked in court.(en.wikipedia.org)
• In Congress, bills like the Kids Online Safety Act and Kids Off Social Media Act would impose duties on platforms or restrict minors’ use, but these proposals assign enforcement mainly to the FTC and state AGs, not the FDA, and key bills have stalled or remain pending.(en.wikipedia.org)

None of these developments amount to the FDA—or any comparable federal health regulator—reclassifying mainstream social media platforms or their algorithms as regulated health products because of mental‑health or eating‑disorder impacts. The regulatory model remains advertising oversight plus general consumer‑protection and privacy law, not FDA‑style product regulation of Instagram itself. Given that more than four years have passed since 2021 with no such assertion of authority, the normalized prediction that social media products would come under FDA‑type public‑health regulation within “the next several years” has not materialized.