Newly released court documents allege that Meta ignored, downplayed, and hid internal research showing Instagram was harming children — while its own employees privately described the platform as addictive and dangerous.
According to the New York Post, the filings, unsealed Friday in federal court in Northern California, are part of a sweeping lawsuit brought by dozens of state attorneys general, school districts, and parents.
The case targets Meta, TikTok, Snap, and YouTube, accusing them of prioritizing profit over child safety and misleading the public about the risks their platforms pose to young users.
According to the documents, Meta’s internal conversations about Instagram’s effect on kids were far more candid than the company’s public stance.
One user experience researcher wrote in a chat, “Oh my gosh yall IG is a drug.” Another employee responded, “We’re basically pushers.”
Researchers also claimed Instagram chief Adam Mosseri “doesn’t want to hear it” when confronted with evidence that the platform’s design was delivering dopamine hits that kept kids compulsively engaged.
One employee said Mosseri “freaked out” when shown an internal review describing Instagram’s addictive mechanics.
Plaintiffs argue that these exchanges show a pattern of Meta burying research that highlighted Instagram’s link to anxiety, depression, and harmful social comparison — as well as internal warnings that minors were being targeted by sexual predators..
“We strongly disagree with these allegations, which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions in an attempt to present a deliberately misleading picture,” a company spokesperson said.
They added that Meta has spent years improving teen safety, including building “Teen Accounts” with more protections and expanded parental controls.
But the unsealed materials include sworn testimony from current and former Meta employees, alongside internal studies obtained through discovery.
According to Time, which first reported on the filings, one of the most startling examples was Meta’s “17x” strike threshold for suspending accounts associated with sex trafficking or prostitution.
“That means that you could incur 16 violations for prostitution and sexual solicitation, and upon the 17th violation, your account would be suspended,” testified Vaishnavi Jayakumar, Instagram’s former head of safety and well-being. “By any measure across the industry, [that] is a very, very high strike threshold.”
Another piece of evidence centers on “Project Mercury,” a Meta study conducted in 2020 examining how users felt after stepping away from Facebook and Instagram.
According to the filings, the results were “disappointing” to Meta: users who stopped using Facebook for just a week reported lower levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison.
Instead of releasing the findings or digging deeper, plaintiffs claim Meta shelved the study and dismissed its conclusions as biased by “the existing media narrative around the company.”
One employee privately warned that hiding the results would make Meta look like “tobacco companies doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves.”
The filings also accuse Meta executives of lying to Congress in 2020 when they claimed they had no evidence linking Instagram use to harm in teenage girls.
Sacha Haworth of The Tech Oversight Project issued a blistering statement in response to the revelations.
“Mark Zuckerberg has blood on his hands: he has known for over a decade that pedophiles and sex traffickers were targeting children on his platforms,” she said. “Instead of fixing the problem, what he did was worse than nothing.”
The lawsuit also targets YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok. A Google spokesperson rejected the claims, saying, “These lawsuits fundamentally misunderstand how YouTube works and the allegations are simply not true.”
The case is expected to intensify pressure on Meta in Washington, where lawmakers have long accused the company of minimizing the risks its platforms pose to children.
