Meta's internal documents produced during litigation.
488 records · How documents are sourced
91 records · All
Court filing · 9 pp
0.45% of users predicted to be Youth and predicted to reside in the U.S. had Take a Break enabled on Instagram between January 8, 2023 and September 24, 2024.
1excerpt
Court filing · 235 pp
Allegations, not findings. Open the quoted internal records to read the source.
[Opposition]: In 2023… Meta's researchers launched a longitudinal study to follow 4,000 U.S. teenagers over the academic year. The goal of this survey was to measure teens' attentiveness ("Possible unintended, unaware, and/or habitual use") and capability ("Pe…
3excerpts
Research & report · 5 pp
"Overall Takeaways/Recommendations: We are currently planning to sunset Take A Break as part of time management consolidation. This aligns with the fact that teens mostly have short sessions. Take A Break is likely not the appropriate market fit time managemen…
1excerpt
Presentation · 30 pp
"Teens' average scores across scales assessing sense of control (attentiveness and capability) indicate they report lower control, on average, over various aspects of their use of IG and TikTok compared to other apps." "Teen average scores on subscales assess…
2excerpts
Messages & email · 8 pp
████: "They should audit every surface team's goal across the company, think about whether we would be comfortable telling the world that we are optimizing for x for their kid, and when the answer is no, come up with a defensible alternative." [Redacted…
1excerpt
Court filing · 263 pp
Allegations, not findings. Open the quoted internal records to read the source.
Specifically, with accounts clearly belonging to children, Meta has: • Proactively served and directed them to a stream of egregious, sexually explicit images through recommended users and posts – even where the child has expressed no interest in this content;…
13excerpts
Court filing · 233 pp
Allegations, not findings. Open the quoted internal records to read the source.
[Complaint]: Instagram heavily emphasized content that promoted negative appearance comparison. Fashion and beauty, relationships, "[w]estern pop stars who emphasize their bodies," and images that "emphasize women's bodies generally (e.g., cleavage, swimwear)"…
36excerpts
Messages & email · 11 pp
████: "Are the compliance people reading the same litigation and legislation that I am?" ████: "I am asking the same question" ████: does ████ realize how the core algo is set up? Like it's literally just mathematically optimizing for…
1excerpt
Messages & email · 3 pp
████: "I feel like i'm reading totally different litigation and legislation than our org leaders… We literally are optimizing teen feeds for engagement. We can change that, but none of the YIPs actually address this core issue." ████: "[D]o we do …
1excerpt
Presentation · 3 pp
Problematic Use: Definition & Impact "Problem statement: Occurs when people feel they lack control over their usage of technology and this leads to negative life impact (e.g. on sleep, productivity, parenting)" "Importance to key stakeholders: • Experts: Pr…
1excerpt
Presentation · 3 pp
Nearly a quarter of teens exceed Instagram's own problematic use thresholds for overall time spent and late-night use
1excerpt
Presentation · 47 pp
"Scientific evidence suggests that harmful content exposure as well as excessive and problematic social media use primary areas for concern." "Teens who spend more than 3 hours/day on social media face double the risk of poor mental health outcomes"
3excerpts
Presentation · 3 pp
"Over the last two years, MWB has been focused on understanding and reducing problematic use for Instagram Users." "Why does problematic use matter? Research and analysis has revealed three primary reasons for reducing problematic use: 1. Teen WB: Research h…
1excerpt
Presentation · 59 pp
"Problematic Use Definition 1. A perceived lack of control over usage of a technology or social media platform and 2. This lack of control is perceived to lead to negative life impacts (e.g., in domains such as relationships, work/school, sleep, etc)" "Person…
2excerpts
Presentation · 41 pp
"In H1'22, we proposed defaulting new teens into Take a Break based on positive feedback from teens, parents, regulators, and press." "Why we did not pursue it 1. Leadership shared that the bar for defaults is high and should consider policy/legal requirement…
2excerpts
Messages & email · 2 pp
Antigone Davis: "In getting feedback from policy leadership w/r/t policy's integrated youth plan, Erin Egan asked about the development of company positions and 'overarching strategy' regarding the spectrum of youth issues: Age Assurance, Addiction/Problematic…
1excerpt
Presentation · 24 pp
"The p90 threshold for late night (10 PM - 4 AM) time spent over the last 28 days corresponds to 25 minutes per day on IG." "35% of late night time spent for p90+ teens comes from sessions that had a notification delivered within 5 minutes of starting a sessi…
1excerpt
Presentation · 120 pp
"Users' perceived control can be validly measured across age cohorts with questions assessing low attentiveness around platform use (i.e., spending more time, checking, and consuming content without realizing it) and low capability to change platform use (i.e.…
3excerpts
Presentation · 46 pp
"56% of IG teens surveyed say it's difficult to manage how much time they spend on social media and 14% say IG makes it worse" "Teens and young adults are more likely to report experiencing problematic use, consistent with developmental differences in self-co…
1excerpt
Presentation · 66 pp
"33% of teen sessions between 12 am and 4 am start due to a notif (26% receive and click after midnight)" For users with late night PU behaviors: "An average of 40% of teen's sessions, start from a notification or an app badge." and "18% of dau start a sessio…
2excerpts
Research & report · 3 pp
"FACEBOOK'S INSIGHTS WORK: PROBLEMATIC USE External research has [ HYPERLINK "https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2006/8/1/article-p169.xml" \h ] that excessive use of social media can result in riskier decision-making patterns associated with substance use …
1excerpt
Presentation · 10 pp
"we estimate that 18.3% of IG teen users exhibit behaviors associated with PU." "negative impact of poor sleep is well-documented (ref) and this is where we have coverage gaps for ~8% of teens" "Previous research which linked problematic Facebook use to late…
1excerpt
Presentation · 15 pp
"Insiders and voters hated claims that social media is not addictive. Insiders and voters generally anchor heavily on their own personal experience and don't trust research. ... Avoid making any mention of addiction. Instead, make a commitment to address conce…
1excerpt
Messages & email · 4 pp
████: "We took into account severity but it was in the sense of, do we have causal evidence in the literature that these behaviors lead to negative life impact" ████: "For late night use, the negative impacts, such as on work/school performance an…
1excerpt
Sources: published internal records, unsealed discovery exhibits and court filings in MDL 3047 and related litigation. An allegation in a filing is not an independently verified fact.
Meta & Children's Online Safety