About the Social Media: Youth and Mental Health Class Action

Both Facebook and Instagram have designed their products to be addictive and to manipulate their users, while purposely ignoring internal research that demonstrates the damaging psychological effects of continued exposure to these platforms. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook’s researchers have identified the platform’s ill effects. The leaked documents included a data presentation. The presentation included slides with information summarizing research about teen girls who experience issues related to body image and increased anxiety. The leaked documents also revealed among those young adults who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users had linked their desire to kill themselves back to Instagram.

In public, Facebook has consistently downplayed the app’s negative effects and has not made its research public or available to academics or lawmakers who have asked for it. Facebook has said the negative effects are not widespread and that some of the harmful aspects are not easy to address.