Meta has recently been engaged in legal battles regarding the problematic use and impacts of their products. As a result of this legal action, internal studies and research conducted by Meta have been brought to light.
The findings are disturbing — they detail not only that the effects are real and prevalent, but more so that Meta knew this information and chose to bury all evidence. Keep that in mind as you read.
Project Mercury
Project Mercury was an internal experimental study conducted by researchers at Meta. The goal was to use quantitative methods to prove to the public that Facebook use did not cause the mental health issues it was being accused of — anxiety, loneliness, depression, and lower wellbeing. The experiment was described internally as "much higher quality," and "everyone involved in the project had a PhD."
Project Mercury measured changes in people's mental health when they stopped using Facebook for a set period of time.
Early results found that "people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison."
After receiving these results, Meta stopped the experiment, blaming the findings on "an existing media narrative." The results were never publicly released.
One Meta employee expressed concern: "If results are bad and we don't publish, and they leak, it is going to look like tobacco companies doing research and knowing cigarettes were bad and then keeping that info to themselves." Meta proceeded to keep the results private.
In a separate paper, a Meta employee with a PhD in economics expressed concern that "there are reasons to worry about self-control and use of our products." In response, another researcher noted that "driving sessions (doomscrolling) incentivises making the product more addictive" and that "intermittent rewards are the most effective at doing so — think slot machines — as they reinforce behaviours that are especially hard to extinguish, even when they provide little reward, or cease providing a reward at all."
MSYT Study
Meta conducted a longitudinal study on teens. The following results were found:
- 37% of teens reported low attentiveness — unaware, habitual, automatic usage — when using Instagram.
- 28% of teens reported low capability — the ability to stop, if needed — when using Instagram.
The study also found that "parental and household factors have little association to teens' level of awareness."
The MSYT study describes clearly a population of young people who have lost their agency to Instagram — not isolated cases, but sitting at around one in three young people. This was never publicly disclosed.
As one Meta employee put it: "higher Facebook use is correlated with worse physiological states." Meta knew. They chose to say nothing.
Your time, your focus, your mental state. That is what is being manipulated and then sold to advertisers. Very often when something is free, it is you that is being sold.