Meta’s plan to discredit Haidt shows Big Tech cannot police itself around kids

Parents should believe Jonathan Haidt, not Meta, because Meta’s own notes show staff setting a goal to turn scholars against the man warning them about phones and kids¹. Minutes dated March 8, 2023, record the goal of Meta research vice-president Curtiss Cobb: “Curtiss’s goal for this work: how do we get the academic community to disavow Haidt.”²

Haidt had testified before Congress in 2022 and by February 2023 was posting his research on Substack³. Meta’s staff answered a researcher’s evidence with a goal about the researcher.

The notes surfaced in a court filing in litigation brought by school districts suing the company². Law360 reports the unredacted documents were filed publicly on Friday, Oct. 23. Law360 also reports Meta set its goal “as it in-house rebuffed internal efforts to study social media's impact on teen health.”¹

Meta planned a quiet campaign against Haidt

The notes call for quiet: “Not thinking about this as a loud strategy. A below-the-line campaign.”² One line reads, “Get Gellman to write a take-down piece.”³ Other notes discuss a “whisper strategy” to “turn academics against Haidt” and ways “debunking Haidt can happen.”⁴

The proposed tactic was to weaponize academic disagreement by provoking scholars and isolating Haidt. The notes say Curtiss “thinks we need to focus on the media” to convince reporters that Haidt is “not credible.”⁴

A March 7 entry ties the plan to the courtroom: “Multi district litigation is next 2 yrs and his arguments will be featured there.”³

Parents cannot leave kids’ safety to Meta

Haidt’s book is why this reaches your kitchen table: it helped tip the debate toward measures such as Australia’s under-16 ban². Fairplay executive director Josh Golin says the documents show the company is “far more concerned with managing its reputation than actually making Instagram safer and less addictive for young people.”⁴ Fairplay said it on X: “Any company that would launch a secret plan to take down a critic is a company we can't trust with our kids' safety.”⁵

A separate March 2023 email shows a Meta employee complaining that the company’s legal team was “trying to block or redesign” a planned study on “youth social emotional trends.” Instagram, meanwhile, made “attorney-client privilege” hats to celebrate the 2024 launch of Instagram Teen Accounts. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers told an Oct. 9 hearing, “I have never seen a company whose employees are so taken with the attorney-client privilege that they’d have caps made.”⁴

The plaintiffs accused Meta of abusing attorney-client privilege to withhold or redact thousands of company records⁴. The judge ordered retired U.S. Judge Suzanne Segal to review Meta’s classifications and decide which were properly withheld. Who benefits when parents never see those pages?

Meta’s notes targeted a critic, not his claims

Meta’s best answer is the research literature, and The Verge reports that “several large studies and meta analyses have found little or no direct effect of social media use on teen mental health at the population level.”³ A company confident in that answer would have made it in the open; these notes plan to enrage academics and persuade reporters instead.

The notes do not identify which “Gellman” they mean. Andrew Gelman says he has “never been contacted by anyone at Facebook or Meta regarding Jonathan Haidt or his work.” Haidt reads the plan as an admission: “If social manipulation was the heart of their strategy for responding to my writing, that is strong evidence that they had no way to rebut my research.”³

Lawmakers must set rules for kids online

Congress and state legislatures should require age verification and default protections for minors, so a child’s safety no longer rests on a company’s assurances. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is overseeing the school districts’ case in California federal court, and parents should watch what comes out of it⁴.

Put three questions to every senator and state legislator, yes or no. Will you vote to require age verification for social media? Will you vote for default protections on every minor’s account? Will you take Meta’s word on kids’ safety without the documents?

Sources

1. Meta Docs Reveal Plan To Discredit Teen-Harm Critic Haidt - Law360
2. Meta discussed ‘whisper strategy’ against social media critic Jonathan Haidt, files show | Meta | The Guardian
3. Meta considered a ‘whisper strategy’ to turn academics against Jonathan Haidt | The Verge
4. Meta schemed 'whisper strategy' to discredit influential social media critic Jonathan Haidt: bombshell docs
5. @fairplayforkids on X, 2026-10-27: 😱SHOCKING: Meta set a goal to "get the academic community to disavow" & "turn against" Jonathan Haidt. Any company that would launch a secret plan to take down a critic is a company we can't trust with our kids' safety. ❌ Read our statement (link in comm, 2026-10-27