Academics express concern to Zuckerberg over potential Meta harm

More than 250 international academics have signed an open letter to Meta (formerly Facebook) chief executive Mark Zuckerberg expressing concern that the company's internal research on potential harms caused by its platforms to adolescents is poorly designed and too secretive.

The letter calls for better research standards, more open collaboration with independent experts and the establishment of an independent oversight trust for child and adolescent mental health on Meta platforms.

Written and signed by global experts in psychology, psychiatry, online technology, child development and social data science, the letter states that Meta's research about younger users of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – some of it leaked in documents by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen – is produced "behind closed doors and without independent oversight".

As a result, they say only a “fragmented picture” is given of the studies Meta is conducting. The academics also state that they “do not believe that the methodologies seen so far meet the high scientific standards required to responsibly investigate the mental health of children and adolescents”.

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They add: “You and your organisations have an ethical and moral obligation to align your internal research on children and adolescents with established standards for evidence in mental-health science.”

Concerns

Prof Andrew Przybylski, director of research at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, and one of the letter's principal authors, said the letter arose from three concerns.

“First, it’s growing increasingly difficult to study links between children and adolescent behaviour and mental health because an increasing share of this data is held by social-media companies. Second, the [Haugen leaks] revealed there were active studies of wellbeing and mental health ongoing, but it wasn’t meeting basic scientific standards,” he said.

Prof Przybylski added that “it was clear that the public and policymakers were fundamentally misunderstanding what this secret research was showing. Taken together, this started the conversations that lead to the letter.”

He said that public discussion on such serious issues “is completely disconnected from the science. On one hand there are powerful corporate interests, on the other a handful of outspoken but scientifically illiterate thought leaders whipping up a moral panic.”

As a result, he said, “regulators and policymakers have little idea what practical steps need to be taken to make progress on child and adolescent mental health science”.

The letter recommends several steps to Meta, and concludes with an offer from the academics to aid Meta in conducting research and improving the platforms.

“We believe your platforms have the potential to play an important role in impacting billions of young people for the common good. This global challenge requires a global solution,” it states.

“This is an industry-wide challenge. A survey from just last month suggested that more US teens are using TikTok and YouTube than Instagram or Facebook, which is why we need an industry-wide effort to understand the role of social media in young people’s lives,” said a spokeswoman for Meta.