According to Digital Trends, a newly unredacted legal filing reveals explosive allegations against Meta. The lawsuit claims that back in 2019, the company launched an internal study called Project Mercury that found users who took just one week off from Facebook reported feeling significantly less depressed, anxious, and lonely. Instead of acting on these findings, Meta allegedly shut down the research project and kept the results quiet. This comes as part of a massive lawsuit filed by school districts, parents, and state attorneys general accusing Meta, YouTube, Snap, and TikTok of fueling a youth mental health crisis. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone fired back, calling the claims “cherry-picked” and arguing the study was a flawed pilot where users simply expected to feel better.
Big tobacco vibes
Here’s the thing: if these allegations are true, we’re looking at something way bigger than just another tech company scandal. The comparison being made to tobacco industry coverups isn’t casual – it’s deadly serious. Basically, we’re talking about a company potentially knowing its product was harming users’ mental health and choosing to hide that evidence rather than address it.
And that’s what makes this so disturbing. We’ve all had that nagging feeling that social media might not be great for our mental wellbeing. But when the platform itself allegedly has research confirming those suspicions and buries it? That crosses a line from “maybe this isn’t healthy” to “they knew and didn’t care.”
Parental nightmare fuel
For parents, this lawsuit is basically confirmation of every worst fear. Think about it: you’re already worried about screen time, social comparison, and cyberbullying. Now imagine discovering the companies behind these platforms might have had concrete evidence their products were making kids more depressed and anxious – and kept pushing them anyway.
Meta’s response about “over a decade” of safety work rings pretty hollow when you’re accused of hiding research that contradicts your public stance. It makes you wonder: are all those parental controls and safety features actually designed to protect kids, or just to reassure parents while the engagement machine keeps running?
What happens next
This legal battle is just getting started, and we should expect more internal documents to surface. Every email, every study, every internal discussion that comes out will add fuel to this fire. The real question is whether this becomes another tech scandal that fades away or actually forces meaningful change.
Could this finally push regulators to take real action on social media platforms? We’ve seen years of hearings and promises, but very little actual regulation. If these allegations stick, it might finally provide the political will needed to impose serious guardrails – especially around how these platforms treat younger users.
At the end of the day, this lawsuit forces us to confront an uncomfortable reality: these companies’ business models depend on our attention, and our attention often comes at the cost of our mental wellbeing. When the choice is between user health and engagement metrics, which do we really think they’re prioritizing?
