Another trove of leaked Facebook internal research documents has revealed that the company was aware of the fact that over 350 million users had reported indulging in compulsive usage that bordered on the edge of addiction, but the company ended up disbanding the team behind the findings. In the past few weeks, multiple news organizations with access to leaked internal documents have published reports about some extremely worrying decision-making patterns at Facebook, which heavily sided with profitability over the well-being of users.
One of those leaks revealed that the company maintained a two-tier system of users for enforcing its content violation policies. One class included the regular users, while the second class of high-profile “whitelisted” accounts included politicians, celebrities and journalists. Many of these accounts reportedly posted fake news and misinformation that were allowed to linger on the platform longer than they should. This was just one of the many problems the company was struggling against. Some were subsequently exposed via leaked documents as well.
As per one such batch of leaked internal research material reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook researchers documented that one in eight users of the platform admitted to compulsive use of social media that affected everything from their sleep pattern and work to parenting duties and social relationships. Users reported that their problem with compulsive usage — otherwise known as internet addiction — was the worst in the case of Facebook compared to other social media platforms. However, the company — which now goes by the name Meta — dissolved the team behind the research. Some of those findings were independently published and can be found on repositories such as arXiv.
Facebook’s Solution To Problems Is Apparently Burying Them
![Facebook Dissolved Team That Revealed Its Platform Addiction Problem](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Facebook-disbanded-online-addiction-research-team.jpg)
User testimonies collected as part of the internal research revealed “problematic usage habits” such as delaying sleep times due to prolonged usage of Facebook and loss of sleep resulting from exposure to disturbing or violent content. Facebook worked on some of the problems in the long run, such as adding a sensitivity slider on Instagram to control the amount of sensitive content that appears on one’s feed. Members of the “well-being team” estimated that about 12.5 percent of Facebook’s 2.9 billion users faced the issues mentioned above with compulsive usage, which translates to roughly 360 million people hooked to the platform. While only 10 percent of users in the U.S. reported having such issues, the share of users in markets like India and the Philippines was much higher at around 25 percent.
The team found that the sense of lower well-being and problematic use was higher in the case of Facebook compared to other social media platforms among users. In a 2017 blog post written by Facebook’s own researchers, they cited an external study by Professor Jean M. Twenge from the San Diego State University claiming that the use of smartphones corresponds to teen depression. The internal research also mentioned that the number of posts talking about Facebook addiction has also gone up. Sister platform Instagram also grapples with similar problems that Meta seemingly has no idea how to fix. Some of the surveyed users reported that a barrage of notifications and auto-playing videos made it harder to put down their phones and log off of Facebook. However, the company reportedly reshuffled the team twice after 2017, and the resources allocated to it were only half of what was asked before it was eventually disbanded.
Sources: The Wall Street Journal, arXiv, Meta 1, 2