Meta halted internal research suggesting social media harm: court filing

dead Facebook has halted internal research that allegedly showed that people who stopped using Facebook became less depressed and anxious, according to a legal filing released Friday.

The social media giant allegedly began the study, dubbed Project Mercury, in late 2019 as a way to help it “explore the impact of our apps on polarization, news consumption, well-being, and everyday social interactions,” according to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The complaint contains new, unredacted information related to Meta.

The newly released legal brief relates to high-profile, multi-district cases from a variety of plaintiffs, such as school districts, parents and state attorneys general against social media companies like Meta, Google youtube, pop And TikTok.

The plaintiffs allege that these companies knew their platforms were causing numerous mental health-related harms to children and youth, but failed to take action and instead misled teachers and authorities, among several allegations.

“We strongly disagree with these claims, which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misleading opinions in an attempt to present a deliberately misleading picture,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement. “A full record will show that over more than a decade, we’ve listened to parents, researched the issues that matter most, and made real changes to protect teens — like offering teen accounts with built-in protections and providing parents with controls to manage their teens’ experiences.”

Google, Snap, and TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit said the 2019 Meta research was based on a random sample of consumers who stopped using Facebook and Instagram for a month. The lawsuit claimed that Meta was disappointed that preliminary tests of the study showed that people who stopped using Facebook “for a week reported decreased feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison.”

Meta chose not to “sound the alarm,” but instead stopped the search, the lawsuit said.

“The company has never publicly disclosed the results of its disruption study,” the lawsuit states. “Instead, Meta lied to Congress about what she knew.”

The lawsuit cites an unnamed Meta employee who allegedly said, “If the results were bad and we didn’t publish them and they leaked, would it look like the tobacco companies did research and knew cigarettes were bad and then kept that information for themselves?”

Stone, in a series of social media posts, It pushed back on suggestions in the lawsuit that Meta shut down internal research after showing a causal link between its apps and harmful effects on mental health.

Stone called the 2019 study flawed, and said that’s why the company expressed disappointment. The study only found that “people who thought using Facebook was bad for them felt better when they stopped using it,” Stone said.

“This is confirmation of other general research (“inactivation studies”) showing the same effect,” Stone said in a separate post. “It makes sense but it doesn’t show anything about the actual impact of using the platform.”

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