Hey friends,
Meta’s secret is out.
A group of whistleblowers recently created a website exposing how Meta’s own internal research revealed dangers to its users and how they did nothing about it.
In today’s newsletter:
What is Meta’s Internal Research?
5 Things Meta Knew and Did Nothing About
Why I’m done making excuses for Mark Zuckerberg
How do you like your s’mores?
Let’s dive in.
5 Things Meta Knew and Did Nothing About
Jonathan Haidt (The Anxious Generation) and the Tech and Society Lab recently launched Meta's Internal Research.
The public site compiles over 35 internal studies drawn from whistleblowers and state attorney general lawsuits. I'm still working through it, but five findings jumped out fast:
Project Mercury (2019): Quitting the platform for one week reduced depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Meta's own researchers called it "causal."
Project Daisy (2019): Hiding Like counts reduced negative social comparison in teens. Meta kept the feature anyway. Removing it cut ad revenue by 1%.
Problematic Use Survey (2020): 3.1% of users met Meta's own threshold for "severe problematic use" — that’s approximately 111 million people.
The BEEF Survey (2021): 13% of teens ages 13–15 received unwanted sexual advances every week (93% from strangers); 8% were exposed to suicide content weekly.
Body Image Study (2024): Teens already struggling with body image were served nearly 3x more eating-disorder content by the algorithm.
Bottom line? Meta had clear evidence of harmful activity affecting teenagers. They ignored it.
Why I’m Done Making Excuses for Mark Zuckerberg
In his opening statement to the U.S. Senate on January 31, 2024, Mark Zuckerberg stated under oath:
“Mental health is a complex issue and the existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health outcomes.”
He later acknowledged social media use correlates with depression, but said:
“There is a difference between correlation and causation.”
I kind of agreed with him.
Causation vs. Correlation
At the time, there was only evidence for correlation.
I accepted that a public company would naturally optimize for revenue. So responsibility fell upon parents to teach wisdom and moderation. I compared social media to alcohol and said things like “Our kids will probably encounter it, so it’s up to us to teach them how to handle it responsibly.”
But it turns out there was evidence for causation all along. Meta just hid it.
Five years before Mark told the Senate there was no causal link, his own researchers said there was—see Project Mercury. In Project Daisy, Meta’s own researchers admitted a causal link between reducing like counts and negative social comparison, but they kept a harmful design feature because it reduced revenue by 1%.
The growing number of people quitting social media isn't a coincidence. This isn't like alcohol. The effect is more subtle, and it compounds.
No more excuses, Mark.
New Evidence. Same Struggle.
Even with this new evidence, the social pressure to give our kids social media is enormous.
I get it. No parent wants to see their kids feeling left out.
But this new information shows that the benefits of delaying until at least 16-17 far outweigh the social cost of waiting.
How do these findings change the conversation for you? Does it help or feel the same?
Reply and let me know!
If you need practical tools on how to parent your kids through the digital age, we just launched the Practical Parenting Screen Time Series. It’s 90 minutes of research backed training and you can pay what you want.
It’s spring in Northwest Arkansas and backyard nights are back.
S'mores at the McCready household are trending. 📈
Which brings up an age old debate… what’s your opinion?
S'mores... Golden brown or burnt?
My kids' screen time goes down when the fire pit is lit. Coincidence?
Wishing a s’mores night for your family this weekend.
— Ian
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