Why Are Social Media's Effects So Hard to Study? Because Only the Companies Can Truly Do It.

A new Pew survey and a viral Stanford study are being used to suggest social media barely harms teenagers. The numbers in both are smaller than the headlines suggest — and neither has access to the data that would settle the question.

The Companies That Built Social Media Are the Only Ones Who Know the Harms It Can Do

That data does exist, however. It’s just inside Meta’s servers. NYU researchers have now catalogued 35 internal Meta stud…