Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quit Facebook because she says social media is a ‘public health risk’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) says that she's done with Facebook for the sake of her own mental health.

Calling the platform and other social media "a public health risk," the freshman congresswoman advises that everybody else follow suit and be mindful of how social media impacts them.

What are the details?

During a Sunday appearance on Yahoo podcast "Skullduggery," Ocasio-Cortez, 29, said that too much time spent on social media can be damaging to one's psyche.

"I personally gave up Facebook, which was kind of a big deal because I started my campaign on Facebook," she admitted. "And Facebook was my primary digital organizing tool for a very long time. I gave up on it."

She added, "Social media poses a public health risk to everybody."

Ocasio-Cortez went on to point out the myriad effects of social media on people young and old.

"There are amplified impacts for young people, particularly children under the age of 3, with screen time," she said. "But I think it has a lot of effects on older people. I think it has effects on everybody. Increased isolation, depression, anxiety, addiction, escapism."

"I've started to kind of impose little rules on myself," she admitted. "Like, every once in awhile, you'll see me hop on Twitter on the weekends, but for the most part, I take consumption of content, when it comes to consumption and reading, I take the weekends off. And so I'm not, like, scrolling through trying to read everything online that journalists are writing on weekends. I try to do that during the workweek."

Elsewhere in the podcast, Ocasio-Cortez said that she does still compose her own tweets and Instagram and attempts to engage on social media "both as a person with a larger audience, but also as an individual user of these platforms."

The Washington Post points out that Ocasio-Cortez no longer uses the platform personally, but notes that her campaign still uses the platform for ad purposes.