Meta Corporation’s Attack on Plaintiffs is Unethical and Cowardly

Even before the first trial started, Meta relied on insinuation to spread disinformation about families of children harmed by social media.

​

Meta Platforms, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, released a public statement last month spreading disinformation about plaintiffs who allege that Meta products contributed to the mental health problems of minors. This attack on the families of social media victims by the Meta corporation is unethical and cowardly.

Plaintiffs

The lawsuits against social media companies like Meta include allegations that individual harm to children and adolescents, sometimes with tragic outcomes ranging from sexual abuse to suicide, was facilitated by social media platforms operated by corporations like Meta. The number of families that filed lawsuits is now in the hundreds. The first trial has just started.

The plaintiffs in these trials face difficult legal obstacles due to Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which largely shields social media corporations from any blame for harm caused by third-party content. Current lawsuits therefore focus on alleging that social media companies deliberately designed their platforms to be more addictive for children despite being aware of the dangers to kids posed by the use of their products.

Meta’s Attack Against Plaintiffs

Meta starts their statement by misrepresenting the allegations by plaintiffs as requiring the view that mental health problems among adolescents are caused solely by social media: “Recently, a number of lawsuits have attempted to place the blame for teen mental health struggles squarely on social media companies.”

Meta then repeatedly ridicules this fictional view as unscientific, for example by contrasting it with expert views that mental health is “complex and multifaceted” and by declaring that “Narrowing the challenges faced by teens to a single factor ignores the scientific research”.

Next, Meta implies the plaintiffs are not only unscientific but outright dishonest when it declares that “honest conversation about teen well-being must consider the scientific data, as well as potential risks and benefits — not just headlines or anecdotes.”

In other words, Meta caricatures the allegations of the plaintiffs and then, in turn, blames and ridicules the plaintiffs for this very caricature that Meta itself fabricated.

The truth is that the allegations against Meta do not contradict the view that mental health is “complex and multifaceted” in any way. One need not believe that all or most or even any mental health problems were caused solely by social media in order to hold Meta responsible for knowingly designing their products in ways that needlessly facilitated the infliction of harm to countless kids.

Note that Meta uses pure insinuation mode in order to tarnish the reputation of the plaintiffs: in other words, Meta does not even attempt to provide any evidence to support its accusations. Furthermore, Meta formulates its accusations so that all plaintiffs are besmirched and yet Meta can deny it meant any plaintiff in particular.

Motivations for the Attack

Meta is no doubt afraid that news coverage of evidence revealed by the lawsuits will be damning for Meta regardless of how the trials conclude — see Meta’s Internal Research and Trial Evidence to understand why.

This can have serious consequences for Meta — for example, the National Parent Teacher Association already decided to break ties with Meta in view of the evidence publicized during the first few days of the first trial.

The fact that Meta decided to spread public disinformation about the plaintiffs even before the first trial started suggests that Meta views attack as the best strategy to divert attention from evidence of its negligence and malfeasance.

Indeed, the public statement by Meta reads more like a collection of ‘talking points’ than a cohesive argument — Meta’s hope seems to be that others will amplify its attacks against the plaintiffs.

We already know that Meta’s lawyers transgressed ethical bounds (see Meta’s Legal Team Abandoned Its Ethical Duties).

The attack against families of children who have suffered great harm while using Meta’s social media platforms illustrates how Meta executives themselves do not hesitate to transgress ethical boundaries.

Unethical and Cowardly

The attack by the Meta corporation against the plaintiffs is unethical and cowardly.

The caricature of the allegations in lawsuits is a lie fabricated by Meta in order to portray the complaints against Meta as contrary to science and the plaintiffs themselves as ignorant and dishonest.

Furthermore, Meta does all this by insinuating without evidence, which is cowardly.

It is now clear that Meta will try to divert attention from evidence of its negligence and malfeasance by waging disinformation campaigns against families of children harmed by social media.

We see what you are doing, Meta!

​

Note:

The views presented here are strictly my own. Furthermore, this post is not part of my collaboration with the Tech and Society Lab, which is why it appears on my personal site and not on my Lab site. In general, my posts associated with the T&S Lab focus only on factual issues, especially statistics and methodology, without crossing into ethical matters.

​

Addendum

The full title of the Meta statement is Beyond the Headlines: Meta’s Record of Protecting Teens and Supporting Parents. It was published January 16.

The plaintiffs in lawsuits against Meta Platforms include hundreds of parents, numerous school districts, and a remarkably bipartisan coalition of over 40 state attorney generals. The lawsuits are too varied and complex to summarize briefly, but what these lawsuits have in common is the allegation that Meta products contributed to the MH deterioration of minors and that this was made possible by corporate negligence or malfeasance.

The strategy by Meta is to portray these allegations as contrary to scientific evidence — in essence, Meta is saying that the very notion that any of its products could have played any role in the MH deterioration of any child is against science itself, sort of as if the plaintiffs based their allegations on a belief in Astrology or Homeopathy.

Misrepresentation and Insinuation

Meta Platforms start their attack by misrepresenting the position of the plaintiffs:

Recently, a number of lawsuits have attempted to place the blame for teen mental health struggles squarely on social media companies. But this oversimplifies a serious issue.

In reality, these lawsuits do not require the presumption that all or most teenage mental problems were caused by social media, or that social media was the sole contributing factor, or that there is anything simple about the relationship between social media and mental health.

It is Meta who oversimplified the position of the plaintiffs and then, in turn, blamed the plaintiffs for this very simplification that Meta itself fabricated.

The intent is to misrepresent the position of the plaintiffs in order to portray them as misguided ignoramuses.

Meta then declares:

Clinicians and researchers find that mental health is a deeply complex and multifaceted issue, [...]

The false insinuation here is that the lawsuits by the plaintiffs somehow require mental health not to be a complex and multifaceted issue, and that the allegations by plaintiffs are therefore contradicted by clinicians and researchers.

Note that Meta Platforms does not even attempt to provide any evidence. The truth does not matter in these kinds of corporate insinuation campaigns.

Meta then adds yet another insinuation:

Narrowing the challenges faced by teens to a single factor ignores the scientific research and the many stressors impacting young people today, like academic pressure, school safety, socio-economic challenges, and substance abuse.

Implying that plaintiffs rely on reducing mental health to a single factor is just more fabrication by Meta designed to make plaintiffs look like stone age simpletons whose allegations are universally rejected by the scientific community.

Meta then continues with more unsubstantiated accusations:

Despite this complexity, plaintiffs’ lawyers have selectively cited Meta’s internal documents to construct a misleading narrative, suggesting our platforms have harmed teens and that Meta has prioritized growth over their well-being.

No evidence of any ‘misleading narrative’ by even a single lawyer for the plaintiffs is provided by Meta Platforms.

Meta does not criticize – it merely insinuates.

Meta then concludes this section as follows:

These claims don’t reflect reality. The evidence will show a company deeply and responsibly confronting tough questions, conducting research, listening to parents, academics, and safety experts, and taking action.

This indicates that Meta is unwilling to publicly address any specifics of the actual evidence against them – all they are willing to do is cast nebulous insinuations.

Next, Meta implies that blaming them for having any role in the adolescent MH crisis at all means that society will somehow fail to address any other causes:

While social media might be a convenient target, if we ignore the many other factors that affect teens’ well-being, we might miss an opportunity to address root causes that could actually be more impactful, such as academic pressure, family dynamics, and school safety.

This is akin to the tobacco industry attacking anyone who dares to point to the harms of second-hand smoke as being responsible for any failures to address any other sources of air pollution.

The accusation is absurd, but insinuation need not be logical to work.

Meta concludes its attack on the plaintiffs by insinuating that anyone blaming Meta in any way is dishonest:

Any honest conversation about teen well-being must consider the scientific data, as well as potential risks and benefits — not just headlines or anecdotes.

Remember, the plaintiffs against Meta include hundreds of families, numerous school districts, and over 40 state attorneys general. All these people are portrayed as dishonest by Meta because they all supposedly ignore science and instead rely only on headlines and anecdotes.

Meta once again provides no evidence that any plaintiffs do this.

Next, Meta portrays the layers for the plaintiffs as dishonest:

The plaintiffs’ lawyers will try to paint an intentionally misleading picture of Meta with cherry-picked quotes and snippets of conversations taken out of context. The full record will show a company that has consistently put teen safety ahead of growth for over a decade.

Meta somehow knows ahead of the trials that all these plaintiffs’ lawyers will be intentionally misleading – this implies honesty is fundamentally incompatible with suing Meta.

Note that Meta says that only the full record will reveal the truth.

So why is Meta fighting tooth and nail to keep crucial evidence hidden from jurors?

Internal Meta documents revealed that “Meta’s counsel instructed employees to alter, delete, or falsify research findings or data” – per the Oct 27 2025 ruling of a District of Columbia Superior Court judge. This ruling was necessary because Meta Platforms invoked attorney-client privilege in order to keep these facts from the jury, but the judge ruled that there is a ‘crime-fraud exception’ to such privilege:

“The Court notes that Meta’s counsel explicitly advised Meta researchers to ‘remove,’ ‘block, ‘button up,’ ‘limit,’ and ‘update’ their research,” Williams said. “Meta’s counsel offered such legal advice to specifically limit Meta’s potential liability.” (Meta Loses Bid to Block Internal Docs on Teen Mental Health).

Meta Platforms then filed a motion arguing the above ruling was erroneous, and once again, on January 5, 2026, their attempt to keep these facts hidden from the jury was denied (see ORDER DENYING META’S OPPOSED MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION OF OCTOBER 23, 2025 ORDER for legal details).

So yes, let the full record speak for itself – or at least whatever is left of the true record after all the alterations, deletions, and falsifications.

It is particularly remarkable that, in view of the above, Meta has the gall to portray the plaintiffs’ lawyers as dishonest.

It is also quite ironic that Meta’s own lawyers evidently viewed its internal research to be so damning that it needed to be altered/deleted/falsified – and yet Meta insists that scientific research proves it is innocent.