Meta shut down internal research into the mental health effects of Facebook after finding causal evidence that its products harmed users’ mental health, according to unredacted filings in a lawsuit by US school districts against Meta and other social media platforms.
In a 2020 research project named Project Mercury, Meta scientists worked with the survey firm Nielsen to gauge the effect of “deactivating” Facebook, according to Meta documents obtained via discovery. To the company’s disappointment, “people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison”, internal documents said.
Rather than publishing those findings or pursuing additional research, the filing states, Meta called off further work and internally declared that the negative study findings were tainted by the “existing media narrative” around the company. Privately, however, a staffer insisted that the conclusions of the research were valid, according to the filing.
Despite Meta’s own work documenting a causal link between its products and negative mental health effects, the filing alleges, Meta told Congress that it had no ability to quantify whether its products were harmful to teenage girls.
In a statement on Saturday, Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the study was stopped because its methodology was flawed and that it worked diligently to improve the safety of its products. “The full record will show that for over a decade, we have listened to parents, researched issues that matter most, and made real changes to protect teens,” he said.
The allegation of Meta burying evidence of social media harms is one of many in a late Friday filing by Motley Rice, a law firm suing Meta, Google, TikTok and Snapchat on behalf of school districts around the country. Broadly, the plaintiffs argue the companies have intentionally hidden the internally recognised risks of their products from users, parents and teachers. TikTok, Google and Snapchat did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Allegations against Meta and its rivals include tacitly encouraging children below the age of 13 to use their platforms, failing to address child sexual abuse content and seeking to expand the use of social media products by teenagers while they were at school. The plaintiffs also allege that the platforms attempted to pay child-focused organisations to defend the safety of their products in public.
By and large, however, the allegations against the other social media platforms are less detailed than those against Meta. The company is accused of intentionally designing its youth safety features to be ineffective and rarely used, and required users to be caught 17 times attempting to traffic people for sex before it would remove them from its platform, among other things,
Meta’s Mr Stone disputed these allegations, saying the company’s teen safety measures are effective and that the company’s current policy is to remove accounts as soon as they are flagged for sex trafficking. He said the suit misrepresents its efforts to build safety features for teens and parents, and called its safety work “broadly effective".
"We strongly disagree with these allegations, which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions,” Mr Stone said.
The underlying Meta documents cited in the filing are not public, and Meta has filed a motion to strike the documents. Mr Stone said the objection was to the over-broad nature of what plaintiffs are seeking to unseal, not unsealing in its entirety.
A hearing regarding the filing is set for January 26 in Northern California District Court.
