Meta tried to discredit researcher who led campaign on social media harms, court papers show
Internal court documents allege Meta executives sought to smear an academic and author who led a global campaign warning about social media's damage to young people's mental health.
Court documents reveal that senior figures at Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, attempted to discredit an academic and author who led a global campaign highlighting the harm social media can do to young people's mental health. The papers, unsealed in litigation brought against the company, suggest the effort went beyond ordinary disagreement over research findings.
The campaign in question drew attention to the links between heavy social media use and anxiety, depression and other mental health problems among adolescents. Its leader became one of the most prominent voices calling for stronger safeguards on platforms popular with children and teenagers, and for greater transparency from the companies that run them.
According to the filings, Meta's leadership discussed ways to undermine the researcher's credibility rather than engaging solely with the evidence. The documents indicate that the company considered how to frame the academic's work in a negative light, a strategy that critics say reflects a wider reluctance within the technology sector to accept scrutiny of the effects of its products.
The disclosures add to a growing body of material emerging from legal cases in which families, school districts and state authorities allege that social media firms knew their platforms could harm young users but did little to address the risks. Companies including Meta have consistently rejected claims that their products are responsible for the mental health crisis among teenagers, arguing that the research is mixed and that they have introduced tools to help users manage their time online.
The episode raises questions about how technology companies respond to independent researchers whose findings threaten their commercial interests. Academics who study digital wellbeing have long complained of difficulty accessing company data, and the documents suggest that disputes over research can extend into efforts to damage the reputations of the people producing it.
The court papers do not establish the full extent of any campaign against the researcher, and the outcome of the broader litigation remains unresolved. What the documents do show is that inside one of the world's largest technology companies, the public case made by a leading critic of social media was treated as a problem to be managed, not only as a scientific claim to be tested.
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