Meta Notes Discussed a Campaign to Discredit Researcher Jonathan Haidt
Newly filed court documents show that Meta discussed a campaign to discredit social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in March 2023, while the company faced public pressure over teen mental health and upcoming kids safety trials. The material, reported by The Verge, is an internal document titled "Well-being Meeting Sound-check Notes," with bulleted items grouped under several dates.
Haidt has argued that social media is a major driver of rising depression and anxiety among adolescents. He testified before Congress in 2022 on those conclusions, and in February 2023 he began publishing his theories and research on Substack, a newsletter platform. His book The Anxious Generation had not yet been published when the March 2023 discussions took place. According to the New York Times, the book lays out the harms of social media for kids. The paper also notes a landmark Meta settlement related to alleged harms of social media for kids.
The filing describes a "Whisper strategy" to "turn academics against Haidt." Under the heading Tuesday, March 7, 2023, the notes include the entry "turn other academics against Haidt — lot of strong methodologists to say things more forcefully." A March 8 subheading, referring to then-VP of research Curtiss Cobb, states the goal as "how do we get the academic community to disavow Haidt."
Other items sit under a "Below-the-line campaign" heading. One reads "Can't co-opt them, so how do we enrage them." Another proposes to "Get Gellman to write a take-down piece" about Haidt. A further note states that "Multi district litigation is next 2 yrs and his arguments will be featured there." Multi-district litigation is a federal procedure that groups similar lawsuits before a single judge for pretrial handling.
The notes contain proposals, and it is unclear whether Meta acted on any of the ideas in them.
In my view, the distance between a meeting note and an executed plan is where this story will be tested, and readers should keep that gap in view while the litigation proceeds. The broader question is the one the research community has always carried: when a company disputes an academic's conclusions, the dispute belongs in journals, data sets and replication attempts. Haidt's arguments rest on claims that other researchers can test and challenge, and that open contest is the mechanism that lets a field correct itself. Whatever the courts find about these notes, the strongest outcome for teen mental health research is one where the evidence is argued on its merits.
