Meta's Catch-22: Balancing Digital Well-being and Increased User Engagement

2. Meta prioritizes maximizing engagement over young users’ safety.

134. Meta denies that it seeks to maximize young users’ engagement on its Social Media Platforms.

135-136. [Redacted]

137. Zuckerberg stated to Congress on March 25, 2021, that “it is a common misconception that our teams—our goals, or even have goals, of trying to increase the amount of time that people spend” and “I don’t give our News Feed team or our Instagram team goals around increasing the amount of time that people spend.”

138. Meta has also claimed, in a statement published by Gizmodo on October 3, 2021, to “do internal research to ask hard questions and find out how we can best improve the experience for teens.”

139. These representations were false and misleading. Contrary to Meta’s public statements, one of Meta’s key goals is to induce young users to spend ever-increasing amounts of time on its Social Media Platforms.

140-150. [Redacted]

150. Thus, notwithstanding Meta’s public representations to the contrary, increasing young users’ engagement was, and is, a core business objective for Meta.