Court Reveals Meta Hid Mental Health Findings

According to unredacted filings submitted by US school districts, newly released court documents reveal that Meta allegedly concealed informal internal evidence showing harm to users’ mental health caused by Facebook and Instagram. This disclosure emerged during an ongoing lawsuit filed on November 22 against Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snapchat.

In 2020, Meta’s internal researchers conducted a study known as “Project Mercury,” with participation from the Nielsen survey firm.

As part of the study, researchers compared mental health changes among users who deactivated Facebook and Instagram for just seven minutes per day.

The findings showed that:

In simple terms, mental health improved when Facebook and Instagram were not used. However, Meta did not publicly release these findings. After realizing that the results were unfavorable, Meta allegedly stopped the study and withheld the data from the public. Despite this, Meta later told the US Congress that it is not possible to accurately measure whether its apps are harmful. The matter is expected to be discussed further at the next court hearing, scheduled for January 26 at the Northern California Court.