Meta Accused of Hiding Internal Data Showing Facebook Causes Depression & Anxiety

Meta has once again become embroiled in allegations of concealing internal research data. According to a report from Reuters, an unredacted court filing in a class-action lawsuit brought by multiple U.S. school districts against major social-media companies reveals that Meta allegedly hid findings showing that deactivating Facebook can reduce feelings of depression, anxiety, and loneliness — and even deliberately halted the internal investigation that uncovered these results.

The lawsuit accuses the tech giant of knowingly concealing health risks associated with its platform.

The research initiative, codenamed Project Mercury, began in 2020 as a collaboration between Meta’s in-house scientists and the research firm Nielsen, examining the concrete effects on users who “logged off” Facebook.

According to the complaint, when the study’s data indicated that “leaving Facebook benefits mental health,” Meta not only shut down the project but also declined to publish its findings — framing them instead as biased results supposedly “contaminated by existing media narratives.”

Internal documents, however, reveal dissenting voices within the company. Researchers explicitly wrote: “Nielsen’s analysis does indeed show a causal impact of Facebook on social comparison.” Even more striking, an employee compared the situation to the tobacco industry’s past misconduct: “It’s like running a study showing cigarettes are harmful, then hiding the evidence.”

The parallels evoke memories of Shell and Exxon, which discovered links between fossil fuels and climate change in the 1980s yet chose to conceal the truth.

Responding to the allegations, a Meta spokesperson told Reuters: “The full record will show that for more than a decade, we have listened to parents, studied critical issues, and made meaningful changes to protect teens, such as with Instagram’s youth-account policies.” Meta insisted: “We strongly disagree with these claims, which rely on cherry-picked quotes and mischaracterizations.”

Meta is now seeking to have the supporting documents struck from the case, arguing that plaintiffs are demanding an excessively broad level of disclosure. A corresponding hearing is scheduled for January 26, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

This is not the first time Meta has been accused of suppressing unfavorable findings. In 2023, 41 U.S. states sued the company over similar concerns, and the presiding judge ruled that Meta’s lawyers had attempted to block the release of internal studies showing the platform’s harmful effects on teenagers.

As public anxiety intensifies, governments worldwide are taking increasingly aggressive measures. Malaysia recently announced plans to join Denmark and Australia in proposing laws to ban minors from using social-media platforms — a clear sign that regulators’ trust in tech giants has fallen to new lows.

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