As the Park City School District works to shield junior high school students from the harmful effects of social media, requiring their cell phones to be locked away during the school day, Frances Haugen, who was the lead product manager of Facebook’s civic misinformation team, continues her work against her former employer saying the company prioritizes profits over public safety.
In 2021, Haugen turned over tens of thousands of Facebook’s internal documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as well as the Wall Street Journal, which published a series of reports called “The Facebook Files.”
Once Haugen went public, she testified before Congress and explained how Meta lied to the public about making progress against hate and misinformation on its platforms.
Haugen’s attorneys have filed several complaints with the SEC, which enforces the law in financial markets, alleging that Facebook has lied and withheld information from its investors.
Haugen said she didn’t work on the distribution algorithms that have proved to be so harmful, though she did at other companies like Pinterest and Yelp.
“It's just we lived in a culture where you didn't really think about how this could be misused, and we were allowed to do that because there was no oversight,” Haugen said. “The public had no rights to ask questions.”
As a result of her exposing Meta, 44 states, including Utah, have sued the social media giant.
“Saying you guys [Meta] are basically the tobacco companies again,” Haugen said. “You knew you were hurting kids. You lied to the public and said these things are fine. You hid the data, you buried it. You intentionally went out there and confused the public. If that lawsuit ends up getting settled, and there's a good chance that it's going to get settled in the next six months, we're going to see massive changes in how social media works for our kids.”
But Haugen said the damage has already been done.
“Social media is not just a teenager issue any more,” she said.” We might see the worst consequences by the time a kid turned 16,” she said. “But you know, even as far back as 2022, 30% of seven-to-nine-year-olds were on social media. What should our relationship with social media be? When should kids start using it? Why is taking a little bit of a pause so important? And what can platforms do to make products that are safer for kids?”
Frances Haugen is the keynote speaker at the next Salt Lake Community College speaker series Thursday, Nov. 7, at 7 p.m. at the Grand Theater.
The 45-minute panel discussion with local experts will focus on social media’s impact on teens’ mental health.
Tickets are free but limited. You can find the link to register online here.
