Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm, US court filings allege

(Removes reference to Instagram in paragraph 1 and 2; corrects type of lawsuit in paragraph 1; removes reference to Clegg in paragraph 4) By Jeff Horwitz (Reuters) -Meta shut down internal research into the mental health effects of Facebook after finding causal evidence that its products harmed users’ mental health, according to unredacted filings in a lawsuit by U.S. school districts against Meta and other social media platforms. In a 2020 research project code-named “Project Mercury,” Meta scientists worked with survey firm Nielsen to gauge the effect of “deactivating” Facebook, according to Meta documents obtained via discovery. To the company’s disappointment, “people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison,