Meta’s own researchers called Instagram a “drug” while burying evidence that the company’s social media apps were hurting kids’ mental health, according to bombshell filings unsealed in California federal court on Friday.
The alarming details surfaced in Northern California District Court, where a coalition of US state attorneys general, school districts and parents are suing Meta, Google-owned YouTube, TikTok and Snap over allegations they prioritized profit while misleading the public about potential risks to children.
“Oh my gosh yall IG is a drug,” one Meta user experience researcher allegedly stated in an internal chat, according to documents cited in the court records.
“We’re basically pushers,” another Meta employee allegedly responded.
Instagram chief Adam Mosseri “doesn’t want to hear it” and “freaked out” when presented with an internal review about how the app was essentially getting kids hooked with dopamine hits, one of the researchers said.
The plaintiffs allege that the internal evidence showed Meta has a track record of systematically downplaying or covering up research showing how its apps were fueling addiction and anxiety or depression, as well evidence that kids were being exposed to online sexual predators.
“We strongly disagree with these allegations, which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions in an attempt to present a deliberately misleading picture,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.
“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 – like introducing Teen Accounts with built-in protections and providing parents with controls to manage their teens’ experiences,” the spokesperson added.
Evidence cited in the newly unsealed filings includes sworn testimony from current and former Meta employees, as well as internal documents obtained through discovery. Time was first to report on the filings.
The filings cited testimony from Instagram’s former head of safety and well-being, Vaishnavi Jayakumar, along with internal docs that showed Meta had a “17x” strike policy before suspending accounts linked “trafficking of humans for sex.”
“That means that you could incur 16 violations for prostitution and sexual solicitation, and upon the 17th violation, your account would be suspended,” Jayakumar testified. “By any measure across the industry, [that] is a very, very high strike threshold.”
The legal brief also unpacks Meta’s alleged handling of research codenamed “Project Mercury,” a 2020 study that examined what happens when users stopped using Facebook and Instagram for a month compared to those who continued normal usage.
To Meta’s alleged “disappointment,” the study showed “[p]eople who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison,” according to documents cited in the filings. Social comparison refers to people determining their self-worth based on how they are similar to or different from others.
Rather than publicize the results or conduct more research, Meta allegedly opted to bury the study while claiming its findings were biased as a “result of the existing media narrative around the company.”
One Meta employee fretted that keeping the results hidden was “going to look like tobacco companies doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves,” according to internal documents.
The plaintiffs allege that “Project Mercury” was direct evidence that Meta officials lied to Congress when they said in December 2020 that they had no way to determine if there was a correlation between increased use of Instagram and harm to teenage girls.
The court documents could cause more blowback for Meta on Capitol Hill, where the company’s executives have insisted for years that they are doing all they can to protect underage users from bad outcomes.
“Mark Zuckerberg has blood on his hands: he has known for over a decade that pedophiles and sex traffickers were targeting children on his platforms, and instead of fixing the problem, what he did was worse than nothing: he killed safety features, buried internal research, and then lied about it to Congress,” said Sacha Haworth, Executive Director of The Tech Oversight Project.
The lawsuit also accused YouTube, Snap and TikTok of safety failings, especially when it comes to protecting young users.
A Google spokesperson said: “These lawsuits fundamentally misunderstand how YouTube works and the allegations are simply not true.”
TikTok and Snap did not immediately answer requests for comment.
With Post wires
