meta Facebook has discontinued an internal study that found people who stopped using Facebook felt less depressed and anxious, according to a legal filing released Friday.
The social media giant launched the study, dubbed Project Mercury, in late 2019 to “examine the impact of our apps on polarization, news consumption, well-being, and everyday social interactions,” according to legal briefs filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
This file contains new, unedited information about the meta.
The newly released legal briefs relate to a high-profile, multidistrict lawsuit brought against social media companies like Meta by a variety of plaintiffs, including school districts, parents, and state attorneys general. Google YouTube, snap And TikTok.
The plaintiffs allege, among other claims, that the companies knew their platforms were causing a variety of mental health-related harms to children and youth, but failed to act and instead misled educators and authorities.
“We strongly disagree with these claims, which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions in an attempt to intentionally present a misleading image,” Mehta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “The full record shows that for more than a decade, we have listened to parents, investigated the issues that matter most, and made real changes to protect teens, including introducing Teen Accounts with built-in protections and giving parents more control to manage their teens’ experiences.”
“These lawsuits fundamentally misunderstand how YouTube works, and the allegations are simply untrue,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
“YouTube is a streaming service that people use to watch everything from live sports to podcasts to their favorite creators primarily on their TV screens, not a social network where they go to catch up with friends,” a Google spokesperson said. “We have also developed specialized tools for young people that families can manage, with guidance from child safety experts.”
Snap and TikTok did not respond to requests for comment.
The 2019 meta-study was based on a random sample of consumers who stopped using Facebook and Instagram for one month, according to the complaint. In the lawsuit, Mehta claims he was disappointed that the study’s first test showed that people who stopped using Facebook for a week had “lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison.”
Rather than “sound the alarm,” Mehta chose to halt the study, according to the complaint.
“The company never made the results of its inactivation studies public,” according to the complaint. “Instead, Mehta lied to Congress about what he knew.”
In the complaint, an anonymous Meta employee is quoted as saying, “If the results were bad and they were leaked without being made public, would it look like the tobacco company did the research and knew the cigars were bad and kept that information secret?”
In a series of posts on social media, Mr. Stone argued the implications of the lawsuit that Meta had halted an internal investigation following claims that showed a causal link between its app and negative mental health outcomes.
Stone characterized the 2019 study as flawed, which is why the company expressed its disappointment. Stone said the study simply found that “people who believed Facebook use was bad for them felt better when they stopped using it.”
“This corroborates other public studies (‘inactivation studies’) demonstrating the same effect,” Stone said in another post. “It makes sense intuitively, but it doesn’t show us anything about the practical effects of using the platform.”
CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed reporting.
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