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Meta allegedly stopped internal research on social medias impact on people after finding negative results, a court filing released Friday claims. The filing took place in a Northern California District Court, as a group of U.S. state attorneys general, school districts, and parents launched a suit against Meta, Google-owned YouTube, TikTok, and Snap. The court documents allege that Meta misled the public on the mental health risks to children and young adults who excessively use Facebook and Instagram, even though its research showed that the social media apps had demonstrated harm. “The company never publicly disclosed the results of its deactivation study,” the lawsuit says. “Instead, Meta lied to Congress about what it knew.” The research, code-named “Project Mercury,” took place in 2020. Meta scientists worked with survey firm Nielsen to see what impact deactivating Facebook had on people. According to internal documents, people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison.” According to the filings, instead of pursuing more research, Meta dropped the project, claiming that participants feedback was biased by “the result of the existing media narrative around the company. Politico reported that in a sealed deposition earlier this year, Metas employees expressed concern about the research’s findings. Oh my gosh, y’all. IG is a drug, Shayli Jimenez, a Meta senior researcher, is quoted as saying in internal documents. In response, another employee allegedly said, Were basically pushers.” The Politico story reported that Jimenez said in her deposition that the comments were made “sarcastically.” In a statement, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said: “We strongly disagree” with the allegations, which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions in an attempt to present a deliberately misleading picture.” Stone continued: The full record will show that for over a decade, we have listened to parents, researched issues that matter most, and made real changes to protect teenslike introducing Teen Accounts with built-in protections and providing parents with controls to manage their teens experiences.” And in a series of posts on BlueSky, Stone also pushed back against the idea that Meta was trying to bury the results of the terminated study with Nielsen, noting that the study found that people who believed using Facebook was bad for them felt better when they stopped using it. “It makes intuitive sense, but it doesnt show anything about the actual effect of using the platform, Stone wrote. However, the latest uproar over Meta’s research is hardly the first time the company’s impact on children’s mental health has been questionedeven by its own employees. In 2021, former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen leaked hundreds of internal company documents to the government, which referenced risks to children. Haugen said the company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but refuses to “because they have put their astronomical profits before people.”A growing body of evidence, outside of the company’s own research, has long pointed to the harm that social media may have on children’s mental health. A 2019 study found that teens who spent more than three hours a day on social media may be at heightened risk for mental health problems, particularly internalizing problems.” Likewise, research shows that mental health disorders among today’s youth are at an all-time high and growing. In response to growing concern around children’s mental health, in a 2023 report, then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on social media companies and policymakers to act, rather than to place the entire burden of limiting kids’ time on social media on parents.
Category:
E-Commerce
We have reached the moment white collar workers have feared for months. Has AI finally come for my job? Companies like Salesforce claim they need fewer human employees to do the work AI can tackle, after laying off thousands. Klarna claims the company was able to shrink its headcount by about 40%, in part because of AI. Duolingo said last spring it will stop using contractors for work that AI can handle. Overall, companies have announced a staggering 700,000 job cuts in the first five months of 2025, an 80% jump from the previous year. The irony is almost poetic. For years, the tech industry assumed robots would come for factory workers first. Amazon’s leaked documents once suggested the company could replace half a million warehouse jobs with automation. Instead, just weeks ago, Amazon laid off 14,000 middle managers while planning to hire 250,000 seasonal warehouse workers for the holidays. The AI revolution, it turns out, is hollowing out the corporate ladder before it touches the warehouse floor. The narrative around artificial intelligence and the job market is challenging for white-collar workers right now. Yet while Silicon Valley sends warnings over which desk jobs AI will consume next, we’re missing an equally important question about the future of AI: What about everyone else? The AI application bubble nobody’s talking about We are currently in an AI application bubble. The last few years of AI innovation have focused almost entirely on white-collar productivity: workplace efficiency tools, revenue-optimization platforms, and communication automation. Many of the major AI innovations from the past two years have been designed for someone working a 9-5 desk job from a laptop. Meanwhile, the people who make up 60% of the American workforce are stuck completing manual onboarding processes, sorting through countless texts to find the right shift, calling in when they need a shift swapped, clocking in on physical time clocks, logging in to web-only portals, and waiting for biweekly paychecks. Were talking about warehouse crews, janitors, delivery drivers, nurses, and game day parking attendants. These are the people who have been largely forgotten when it comes to how AI can transform their day-to-day jobs without risk of eliminating their roles. Every day, millions of shift-based workers keeping hospitals running, concerts staffed, and factories moving are dealing with broken, archaic systems. They’re waiting for shift confirmations, digging through emails for schedules, and calling managers just to ask, “When am I working next?” By focusing almost all of AIs potential on the white-collar economy, weve left out the workers who are irreplaceable. Building accessible, intuitive tools for non-tech-savvy users has the potential to narrow the global inequality gap while creating a more resilient foundation for technological progress and a more resilient economy. Only 40% of American workers say they have a “quality job” While office jobs dwindle, demand for human workers continues to grow. Restaurants need servers. Construction sites need carpenters. Hospitals need nurses. And in turn, the people doing these jobs need shift accessibility, work-life flexibility, and the ability to get paid quickly after shifts so they can continue to participate in the shift work economy and keep the world moving. The human cost of not having a better way to work is striking. A recent Gallup and Jobs for the Future study found that just 40% of U.S. workers have what they define as a “quality job.” The rest face unstable schedules, limited growth opportunities, and financial insecurity. Not because they lack motivation or work ethic, but because the systems that support frontline work haven’t kept pace with the demands of modern life. When workers play significant roles, have preschedules, and receive fair pay, they’re more engaged, more productive, and lead higher quality work lives. What we learned building technology for Uber drivers We know what’s possible when technology is actually designed for frontline workers, because we’ve lived it. While leading product development for the Uber for Drivers app, the two of us spent years focused on the driver experience. Drivers had to navigate complex processes: onboarding, completing background checks and vehicle inspections, selecting preferences, and receiving payments. Uber’s success was powered by a phenomenal self-service app that gave drivers the agency, control, and flexibility they needed in their lives. That experience taught us that technology has the potential to dramatically improve frontline work, and the emergence of AI gives us an opportunity to do that once again. Tools like smarter scheduling systems that account for worker preferences and availability, AI-powered training programs that adapt to individual learning styles, communication platforms that actually work for teams that don’t sit in front of computers all day, and predictive systems that can optimize logistics and reduce physical strain. The technology exists. The investment, however, is still lacking. Irreplaceable The Essential Economy that we are talking about includes sectors like construction, manufacturing, transportation, etc., and represents $7.5 trillion in output per year, which is 27% of Americas GDP, equating to 52 million jobs and two million businesses. If you were to add healthcare, retail, and all public servicesconsidered by many to be critical, hourly work sectors of the economythe size jumps to $12 trillion of GDP, 95 million jobs, and three million businesses. Without people to fill these roles, not only are essential services not being provided, but the US economy also suffers greatly. With each technical revolution, we’ve always seen that collaboration with the technology yields better results than we can without it, or it can without us. Instead, what if AI innovators asked, How can we use AI to make these jobs better, safer, and more productive while also making workers’ lives easier? Consider a warehouse worker trying to swap shifts to attend a child’s school event. In most facilities today, this involves a series of text messages, phone calls, and manual approvalsa process that might take days and often fails. AI could handle this in seconds, reaching out to available workers who have relevant experience and required certifications, sharing shift details, and filling the shift.The worker doesn’t lose their job; they gain flexibility and dignity. Consider a nurse who needs more hours as bills are adding up. He signs up with a new staffing agency so he can pick up extra shifts here and there. Today, onboarding entails manual back-and-forth with the agency and waiting days for assignments. AI can dramatically speed up his time to first shift, verifying his license instantly after he uploads it, offering digital onboarding tailored to the units where hell be picking up shifts, and matching him with shifts that work for his busy schedule. Instead of frustration and delays, the nurse begins with confidence and is able to start earning and covering his bills faster. Applying AI to the roles that need it today As the tech industry grapples with shifts toward white-collar jobs and AIs role, we have an opportunity. The same sophisticated AI systems that can automate corporate reporting can be adapted to optimize shift schedules. The same machine learning that powers chatbots can improve safety protocols. The same natural language processing that summarizes emails can help workers with limited English proficiency better understand their rights and benefits. The current moment of disruption in white-collar work is painful for millions of people, and that pain deserves recognition and resolution. At the same time, it also creates an opening to ask bigger questions about where AI should be applied and who it could serve. The AI revolution isnt going away anytime soon. This is our opportunity to choose how we use it, and who benefits.
Category:
E-Commerce
I feel itthe strain, the fractured attention. The constant tug to check, scroll, click. Everything we want is a tap away. Yet when we chase it all, something essential slips through our fingers. I see it clearly in my own world of conferences and events. These are spaces meant for connection, yet people often leave feeling overwhelmed and oddly under-connected. The truth is that genuine engagement is rare. According to Gallup, only 21% of employees are fully engaged. Most are simply going through the motions. Its a similar story at large-scale events and webinars, where participation beyond passive listening has long been the exception, not the norm. Thats exactly why we need to get smarter about how we bring people in. The paradox of our time is this: We can be anywhere, tuned into everything, and still not truly show up. For business leaders, thats a high-stakes dilemma. In a landscape full of options, youre not just competing with the next brand, youre competing for the attention of someone juggling hundreds of emails, dodging spam, and scrolling past a world in crisis. THE CHALLENGE TO SHOW UP None of this is breaking news. The battle for attention is well-documented. But whats less discussed, and just as urgent, is that not all engagement is equal. True participation is more than clicking, liking, or even showing up. It means contributing, influencing, shaping. And it can be the difference between relevance and irrelevance for a brand. Over the years, Ive sat through countless keynotes and meetings where success was measured in metrics that looked good on paper but meant little to those in the room. Still, many businesses chase the easy numbers: impressions, clicks, headcount. These are visible, measurable, and falsely reassuring. But they often track activity without meaning. And mistaking visibility for vitality is a dangerous error. The deeper challenge, and opportunity, is to create environmentsdigital or physicalwhere participation asks people to show up fully, as themselves. To risk being seen. To give shape to the thoughts and questions theyve been carrying but havent had the space to voice. The problem is that much of what we call participation today is extractive. It looks active on the surface. People give their time, energy, and attention, but get little in return. Extractive participation puts people to work: in classrooms, meetings, projects, or jobs, but it leaves them drained. Its not always intentional. Often, it stems from a legacy mindset, treating participation as a metric, not a meaningful exchange. Most places arent designed to make people feel seen, challenged, or changed. Participation is treated as performance. Its become about optics, a signal of engagement, not the real thing. IT DOESNT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY Ive seen this in my own field. Many well-produced industry events make this mistake at scale. They spend millions to bring people together, flying them across countries or continents, yet fail to foster real participation. Attendees sit through polished keynotes and panels without speaking to the person beside them, someone who might be wrestling with the very same challenges they have. They leave with pages of notes, but no real connections nor any transformation. The best questions in the room go unasked or unanswered. The most valuable ideas stay buried, not for lack of brilliance, but because no one created the space for them to emerge. But it doesnt have to be that way. The rooms we gather inphysical or virtualcan do more than host content. They can become engines of energy, curiosity, and exchange. In my own work, Ive seen whats possible when spaces are designed to welcome vulnerability and invite true dialogue. The energy shifts. The space transforms the people in it. Thats when participation changes, from extractive to generative. People begin asking better questions. They challenge each other more openly. And they stay engaged. GENERATIVE PARTICIPATION Generative participation creates mutual growth and it happens when three things are present: Reciprocity: People are not only consuming, they are also giving and receiving in equal measure. Amplification: Contributions build on one another, creating outcomes no single person could reach alone. Transformation: Participants leave different than they arrived, more connected, more capable, more inspired. In the right space, a single question can shift a strategy. A personal story can upend assumptions. A simple idea can spark a new product, a partnership, a path forward. People dont leave drained but energized. They leave with notes scribbled in the margins, names to follow up with, and ideas they cant wait to bring to life. The difference is simple, but it changes everything. Extractive spaces take more than they give. Generative spaces turn contribution into creation and connection, both with others and with oneself. Thats the difference between engagement that feels like a performance and connection that feels like a life force. The ability to contribute meaningfully isnt a nice-to-have. Its a strategic asset. The challenge is, its hard to measure. You cant showcase it on a slide like attendance numbers or social impressions. But when its missing, you feel it: classrooms where students check out, communities that cant mobilize, businesses full of talk but starved for clarity. And when its there, you feel that too: Teams move with purpose, networks grow stronger, and ideas dont just echo, they spark action. GIVE UP SOME CONTROL True contribution thrives in environments that signal safety, openness, and curiosity. But creating that kind of space goes beyond making people feel comfortable. It means loosening your grip, letting go of control so others can step in, speak up, and shape what happens next. Because heres another truth: Real participation involves giving up some control. We spend plenty of time and energy trying to generate engagement, a phrase that sounds like progress but often sidesteps the harder work of inviting real contribution. True participation is rarely tidy. Creating space for it means welcoming the unexpected. Because the unplanned and the unpolished often create the conditions for something more powerful to emerge. Thats where shared meaning, surprising insight, and the breakthroughs our organizations and our world need most begin to take shape. Christine Renaud is CEO of Braindate.
Category:
E-Commerce
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