(MENAFN) Recently unredacted court documents suggest that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, concealed findings from internal research indicating harmful effects of social media use on mental health.

The documents were released as part of a long-running lawsuit filed by US school districts against multiple social media platforms, which claims that these services have caused addiction and psychological harm among children and teenagers.

According to the filings, a 2020 Meta study asked participants to refrain from using Facebook for a set period and compared their results with a control group who continued normal activity. “To Meta’s disappointment, pilot tests of the deactivation study confirmed that ‘people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison,’” the documents allege.

Despite these internal findings, the filings assert that “Meta lied to Congress about what it knew.”

Meta has come under increasing scrutiny in the United States in recent months. In October, the company announced new protections for “teen accounts,” giving parents the ability to disable their children’s interactions with the platform’s AI chatbots, following earlier reports that the chatbots could engage minors in romantic or sexualized conversations.

The company has also faced antitrust pressure from the US Federal Trade Commission, which has accused Meta of maintaining a monopoly in social networking. However, a Washington district court recently ruled in Meta’s favor, stating that the competition authority had not demonstrated that the company currently holds monopoly power, “whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power in the past.”

MENAFN25112025000045017281ID1110395159