Meta allegedly shut down internal research into the mental health effects of Facebook and Instagram after discovering causal evidence that its platforms were harming users, according to unredacted court filings in a class-action lawsuit brought by U.S. school districts against Meta and other social media companies, reports Reuters.
The research, conducted in 2020 under the project name “Project Mercury,” involved Meta scientists collaborating with Nielsen to explore the effects of temporarily deactivating Facebook and Instagram. The findings, revealed in internal documents, indicated that users who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison.
Instead of publishing these findings or pursuing further research, Meta allegedly chose to halt the project, dismissing the results as being influenced by the “existing media narrative” surrounding the company. However, internal communications suggest that some Meta staff believed the study’s conclusions were valid. One unnamed researcher reportedly wrote, “The Nielsen study does show causal impact on social comparison,” while another compared the situation to the tobacco industry’s suppression of harmful research in the past.
Despite the internal research indicating a causal link between its products and negative mental health outcomes, the filing claims that Meta misled Congress in 2021, stating it was unable to assess whether its platforms were harmful to teenage girls.
In a statement, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone defended the company’s decision to halt the study, saying the research methodology was flawed. Stone emphasized that Meta had long worked to improve the safety of its products, especially for teenagers, and had made real changes based on feedback from parents and researchers. “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,” Stone said.
The claim that Meta buried evidence of its products’ harms is just one of many in a broader legal filing by the law firm Motley Rice. The firm is suing Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snapchat on behalf of school districts across the country, alleging that these companies intentionally concealed the risks associated with their platforms. Among the accusations are claims that social media companies encouraged children under 13 to use their platforms, failed to address child sexual abuse content, and sought to increase social media usage by teenagers during school hours.
The plaintiffs also allege that these companies sought to influence child-focused organizations to defend their products. One example cited is TikTok’s sponsorship of the National PTA, which the filing claims led to internal communications boasting about TikTok’s ability to shape the organization’s messaging.
Although the filings contain fewer details regarding the allegations against TikTok, Google, and Snapchat, the documents presented against Meta are far more extensive.
According to the filing, Meta allegedly designed its youth safety features to be ineffective and rarely used. Meta is also accused of blocking efforts to test safety features that could harm the company’s growth. One document reportedly stated that Meta required users to be caught 17 times attempting sex trafficking before they would be removed from the platform, describing this as “a very, very, very high strike threshold.”
The filing further claims that Meta was aware that optimizing its products to increase engagement among teens resulted in serving more harmful content, but proceeded with this approach anyway. Meta is also accused of stalling efforts to prevent child predators from contacting minors and pressuring staff to justify this inaction. In 2021, Mark Zuckerberg allegedly stated that child safety was not his top concern, citing his focus on building the metaverse instead.
In response to these allegations, Andy Stone reiterated that Meta’s safety measures for teens were effective and that the lawsuit misrepresented the company’s efforts. Stone called the claims “cherry-picked” and “misinformed.”
Meta has filed a motion to strike the internal documents cited in the filing, arguing that the plaintiffs’ request to unseal the documents is overly broad. A hearing regarding the matter is set for January 26, 2026, in Northern California District Court.
Bd-pratidin English/ Jisan
