EXCLUSIVE: Key HHS Official Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos Unpacks Screen Use Advisory And What MAHA Really Means — Daily Caller News Foundation

EXCLUSIVE: Key HHS Official Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos Unpacks Screen Use Advisory And What MAHA Really Means

Daily Caller News Foundation

EXCLUSIVE: Key HHS Official Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos Unpacks Screen Use Advisory And What MAHA Really Means

The architect of a key government initiative aimed at improving children’s health across several indicators told the Daily Caller News Foundation why the issue is especially important now and how it fits into the broader Make America Healthy Again movement.

Anthony Iafrate · Aug 16, 2026 · 6 min read

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EXCLUSIVE: Key HHS Official Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos Unpacks Screen Use Advisory And What MAHA Really Means

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The architect of a key government initiative aimed at improving children’s health across several indicators told the Daily Caller News Foundation why the issue is especially important now and how it fits into the broader Make America Healthy Again movement.

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in May put out a U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory “on the Harms of Screen Use [sic].” In an interview with the DCNF, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Stephanie Haridopolos called the document “a great success,” adding that it was “an opportunity of a lifetime and the capstone of my career to even be the architect of this advisory.”

Haridopolos is currently performing some of the U.S. Surgeon General’s duties while the office of the country’s primary public health spokesperson sits vacant, pending Senate action on President Donald Trump’s nominee, Dr. Nicole Saphier. The 53-year-old physician, who is married to Republican Florida Rep. Mike Haridopolos, told the DCNF her office could not have waited any longer to issue the warning.

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“The parents, I think, when they know the harms, I think they want what’s best for their children, to be honest,” said Haridopolos, a mother of three children. “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.”

"We are not willing to wait—and that's why we did this."
Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos, Director of National Communications for the Office of the Surgeon General, speaks at the Great American State Fair about the Surgeon General’s latest Advisory on the harms of screen use and the… pic.twitter.com/j7IzCjpRXD
— U.S. Surgeon General (@Surgeon_General) July 24, 2026

She also emphasized that, the younger a child, the more important it is for his or her parents to monitor screen use. The doctor told the DCNF that infants and toddlers under 18 months should have no access to screen devices while children under six years of age should have a maximum of one hour of screen time a day “outside of what you need for education.” She noted this daily non-educational maximum only increases to two hours for children between the ages of six and 18.

“There’s a difference between looking something up for purpose versus not having a purpose and doomscrolling for no intent,” Haridopolos stressed.

The HHS official added that children’s exposure to hand-held devices with screens is “slightly different” from television because TV is typically watched at a distance as opposed to up close. Additionally, she underscored that children today primarily use hand-held devices to watch short-form videos that cause dopamine hits, decreasing their attention span and memory capacity.

“And there’s so many harms outside of just the development of the brain that kids are being exposed to online,” Haridopolos continued. “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.”

“We’re not saying technology shouldn’t be embraced. We should do it in a responsible way with digital citizenship,” she added. “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.”