A group lawsuit by Motley Rice law firm, representing several US school districts has according to Reuters revealed an almost systematic frame for hiding, some would even say bury strong evidence of the harm done by social media in relation to especially younger people conducted in tandem with the research institute Nielsen.
This should include internal research in 2020, Project Mercury, being shut down when it turned out that Facebook is harmful to mental health, more specifically that a complete stop from using Facebook gave lower levels of feelings in regards to anxiety, loneliness and depression. The study was never published, but declared "tainted" due to "existing media narrative" - a reason that lacks any scientific foundation.
According Reuters, the court documents included statements from staff that called the study "valid" - "The Nielsen study does show causal impact on social comparison," and another described the cancellation of the study as "doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves."
This is despite META claiming in a congressional hearing this year that they had no means to prove or disprove whether or not their social platforms are harmful to teenage girls.
It is not only Facebook, also TikTok and Snapchat are being targeted in the lawsuit that claims SoMe platforms are aware of risks of harming the users, but are intentionally hiding this knowledge from parents, teachers, and the users themselves.
The allegations against Facebook are numerous, but includes active designing inefficient youth safety features, and intentionally blocking tests of features out of fear that it could limit growth. In one example, Meta - supposedly - requires 17 attempts at human trafficking/sex trafficking before the user account would be disabled, serving harmful content to teenagers to increase engagement, and even - apparently - stalled internal efforts to prevent child predators contacting minors as it could hurt growth.
To no surprise, Meta is currently trying to file for making the documents non-public. This hearing will be on 26th of January.