On September 26, 2021, in the middle of the Facebook Files controversy, Meta took the unusual step of publishing its own internal research. Pratiti Raychoudhury, the company’s Vice President and Head of Research, released two annotated slide decks - the internal Instagram teen well-being studies that The Wall Street Journal had reported on - both to Congress and to the public, with notes added to each slide to give context.
The Wall Street Journal had highlighted findings such as a slide stating that among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, a percentage traced the start of those thoughts to Instagram, and that the app made body-image issues worse for a meaningful fraction of teenage girls. Meta did not dispute that the slides existed but contested the framing. The company stated that on 11 of 12 well-being issues, teenage girls who said they struggled with those issues also said Instagram made them better rather than worse, and argued that “it is simply not accurate that this research demonstrates Instagram is ‘toxic’ for teen girls.” It emphasized that the studies were small, qualitative, and built to inform internal product conversations rather than to produce population-level conclusions.
The release became a case study in how a company responds when its own research is used against it: rather than only rebutting reporting, Meta published the underlying documents with its own annotations.
Why business readers should care: this episode shows what happens when internal research meets public disclosure. The same data can support sharply different stories depending on framing, and a company’s decision to release primary documents - annotated on its own terms - is now part of the crisis-response playbook.