Allegations found in an unredacted court filing, in a class action lawsuit filed by US school districts against Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snapchat allege that Meta deliberately hid evidence about the harm caused by its products. The company performed internal research half a decade ago dubbed Project Mercury.
Troublingly, Meta allegedly shut down the research when it discovered causal evidence that its products harmed the mental health of users. It found that people who stopped using Facebook and Instagram for one week had lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison. Instead of publishing the findings or pursuing further research, the firm is said to have ended the research, stating internally that the findings were tainted by the media narrative around social media harms.
According to Reuters, Meta staff responsible for the research assured the leadership at the company that there was a causal impact on social comparison. One of the staff even compared Meta"s actions to those taken by the tobacco industry, which also hid that cigarettes were bad for health.
Furthermore, if all of these details are in fact correct, it would mean that Meta misled Congress as it claimed to have no ability to quantify whether its products harmed teenage girls. If the internal documentation is correct, then the company did know about the harm its products cause.
The internal documents cited in the lawsuit allege that Meta designed youth safety features to be ineffective and rarely used, with blocking tests on features feared to be harmful to growth. Another allegation against Meta is that it has a high strike threshold, it is claimed that Meta required users to be caught 17 times attempting to traffic people for sex before removing them from the platform.
Over the years, Meta has faced lots of pressure to better protect children using its platforms. However, according to the allegations, Meta found that it could increase teen engagement by serving them more harmful content, but continued anyway for the sake of revenues. Finally, the documents allege that CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in 2021, said child safety was not his top concern, prioritizing building the metaverse and rejected requests to better fund child safety work.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said Meta strongly disagrees with the allegations and called them cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions. He said that Project Mercury was stopped due to flawed methodology and that the company"s teen safety measures are effective. He also clarified that the company"s current policy is to remove sex trafficking accounts as soon as they are flagged
A court hearing date regarding the filing is scheduled for January 26, 2026, in Northern California District Court. Meta has filed a motion to strike the internal documents cited in the filing.