For years, social media corporations have sought to make themselves look like helpful friends in our online lives by creating relationships, communities, and conversations. But fresh court documents in the United States have put Meta back in the news, raising more questions about whether Facebook and Instagram were willfully making mental health problems worse for young people. The newly released materials, which were part of a class action lawsuit filed by U.S. school districts, paint a worrying picture: Meta found evidence that harm was being done, but instead of dealing with what the data showed, it stopped its own investigation.

There has been some tension in this matter before. People have been saying for a long time that social media corporations care more about growth than safety. But the new documents go beyond just talking about ideas. They describe a number of internal research projects, honest comments from employees, and choices made by the company that give us a better idea of what Meta's culture was like at a time when mental health issues were becoming more and more common around the world.

The most notable instance is to a 2020 internal initiative referred to as Project Mercury. Meta's researchers worked with Nielsen to find out what really occurs when people take a break from Facebook and Instagram. People weren't only asked questions in a casual way. Meta urged them to turn off their accounts for a week so they could study changes in mood and health in a more scientific way. Documents that have now been handed to the court show that the results shocked the internal team. In just seven days, people who stopped using the app said they felt "less depressed, anxious, lonely, and socially compared."

Those results would be a wake-up call for any researcher. The notion that temporarily disengaging from social media may alleviate distressing emotions is compelling. And for Meta, it was especially sensitive since it showed something stronger than correlation. It pointed to a cause. There was something about Facebook and Instagram that wasn't only linked to emotional problems; it might be making them worse.

But the papers show that leadership didn't take advantage of the chance to look into it more. The project was instead cut back and then stopped completely. The corporation is said to have told its internal teams that the results were "tainted" by bad press at the time. Some workers, on the other hand, didn't like that explanation. Privately, researchers told senior executives, including Nick Clegg, who was then the policy chief, that the conclusions were still legitimate even if Meta was getting a lot of public criticism. In a message that has since come to light, one researcher put it bluntly: "The Nielsen study does show causal impact on social comparison," followed by a "unhappy face emoji." Another staff member said it was like the tobacco industry "doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves."

The comments show that the people working on the project are morally uneasy. It appeared like the workers understood how serious what they had found was. They also seemed to know how much responsibility major platforms had, especially when their goods affect the daily lives of millions of teens. The documents say that even though Meta knew this, it informed lawmakers in public that it couldn't tell if its platforms hurt teenage girls or any other group of people. From the plaintiffs' point of view, this is the main issue in the case: Meta supposedly possessed solid internal evidence yet told Congress a quite different story.

The business, on the other hand, says that the study was not thrown out for convenience. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement that the study's procedure was wrong and that it couldn't be trusted in its original form. Stone defended Meta's larger efforts by saying, "The full record will show that for more than ten years, we have listened to parents, looked into the most important issues, and made real changes to keep teens safe." Meta still says that it has spent a lot of money on safety features for kids and that its teams are always working to improve tools that block harmful content and encourage better online behavior.

But the court papers include more than just one study. They say that the plaintiffs saw a pattern in what the defendants did: downplaying risk, avoiding disclosures that could hurt the company's reputation, and refusing to give up internal papers that were asked for in court. Plaintiffs also say that Meta's safety tools for younger users didn't work well or weren't enforced well enough since the firm was more interested in engagement and growth. The claims say that the overall message was clear: even if worries about mental health were growing quickly, companies were still focused on getting more users.

The claims go beyond Meta as well. The petition says that TikTok tried to sway the National PTA, a big group that fights for parents and teachers in the US, to publicly back TikTok's claims that its safety features work. Even if the details of this claim are still part of the larger case, it shows a pattern: many platforms seem quite interested in making their ecosystems look safe, even as parents, schools, and researchers become more skeptical.

It's not simply the legal part of this story that makes it so powerful; it's also the emotional part. A lot of families have had to deal with what happened because of social media. Teachers can observe how stressed out students are when they are always online. Parents often feel like they can't keep up with digital environments that move quicker than any rule in the house. Young people are stuck in the middle, wanting to fit in and connect, but sometimes feeling overwhelmed by continual comparisons, feedback loops, and the pressure to do well.

The papers coming out of this lawsuit show that people are dealing with hard questions: How much should a platform be responsible for how its users feel? What should the corporation do when its internal findings go against what it says in public? Does a firm have a moral obligation to reveal research that shows harm, even if it doesn't have to by law?

It's not easy to find answers. Meta says that it has worked hard to make places safer, and it routinely talks about its work with researchers, lawmakers, and mental health groups. Some people say that the corporation's openness has been uneven and that real change only happens when the company is under public or legal pressure.