Mark Zuckerberg Denies Links Between Social Media Use and Mental Health
This week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat for an interview with Verge deputy editor Alex Heath, where the two discussed his company’s approach to government oversight and public perception. When the conversation turned to the impact of social media on children’s mental health, Zuckerberg argued that the “majority of high-quality research” suggests “no casual connection at a broad scale,” and predicted that more research would only strengthen this thesis. Zuckerberg’s comments echo testimony by former Meta employee Arturo Bejar, who warned the Senate Judiciary Committee that the company’s reliance on data had allowed its executives to minimize safety issues. 
 
Zuckerberg later alluded to future research, which, he said, might force the public to reconsider its assumptions about social media and youth mental health; he may have been referring to a new user wellbeing research partnership that Meta recently launched with the Center for Open Science. Like earlier partnerships with outside academics, though, these agreements are fundamentally limited by Meta’s terms. If Zuckerberg wants this research to help absolve Meta of responsibility for the youth mental health crisis, he will first have to convince lawmakers that his company didn’t have undue power over the studies themselves.