Frances Haugen
Whistleblowers & Insiders · Meta (formerly Facebook), Beyond the Screen
The Facebook product manager who leaked internal research showing the company knew Instagram harmed teen mental health.
Frances Haugen worked as a product manager at Facebook before leaving the company in 2021 and coming forward as the source behind what became known as the Facebook Files. Her Senate testimony that October drew on leaked internal research showing Facebook's own researchers had found Instagram worsened body-image and mental-health struggles for some teen girls, and that leadership had been informed of the findings. The disclosures triggered congressional hearings, new state lawsuits, and years of scrutiny into how the platform's algorithms and design choices affect young users. She later wrote a memoir, The Power of One (2023), and founded Beyond the Screen to continue pushing for tech accountability.
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WORKS IN THE LIBRARY (10)
VIDEOS
Discussion With the European Parliament IMCO Committee on the Global Impact of the Digital Services Act
Roughly six months after her first EU Parliament appearance, Haugen returned for a follow-up discussion with the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee shortly after EU negotiators reached political agreement on the Digital Services Act. The session examined whether the finalized DSA and the related Digital Markets Act could function as a global benchmark for platform regulation, coming as MEPs prepared for a visit to major U.S. technology companies. Unlike her earlier appearances, this was a standing-committee discussion following a policy win rather than testimony feeding an active legislative fight. TechKids Foundation includes it as evidence of sustained, multi-year advocacy engagement rather than a single disclosure event.
Facebook Is Misleading the Public on Progress Against Hate Speech, Violence, Misinformation
In this CBS News 60 Minutes interview with correspondent Scott Pelley, Haugen first revealed her identity as the source behind the Facebook Files reporting. She described internal Facebook estimates that its systems catch only a small share of hate speech and violence-and-incitement content despite public claims of strong enforcement, and said a 2018 algorithm change tied ranking more closely to engagement — which she said is linked to more divisive, polarizing content circulating. She also described internal survey research, later cited in her congressional testimony, in which some teen girl respondents associated their Instagram use with a worsening of suicidal thoughts and eating-disorder symptoms. TechKids Foundation cites this as the interview that made her disclosures broadly public before her Senate appearance two days later.
TESTIMONY
Written Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security
Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, submitted written testimony and appeared before a U.S. Senate Commerce subcommittee on October 5, 2021, after leaving the company with tens of thousands of internal documents. She told lawmakers that Facebook's own researchers had studied how Instagram's design was associated with worsened body image, anxiety, and self-harm ideation for a share of teen girl users, and that leadership had been briefed on those findings. She argued the company's engagement-based ranking systems reward divisive and extreme content, and asked Congress to require outside oversight of platform algorithms and data rather than relying on voluntary self-policing. This hearing is widely credited with catalyzing subsequent state investigations and federal legislative proposals on platform design and children's safety.
Oral Evidence to the UK Parliament's Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill
Three weeks after her U.S. Senate appearance, Haugen gave oral evidence to the UK Parliament's Joint Committee scrutinizing the Draft Online Safety Bill. She told British lawmakers that Facebook's engagement-based ranking amplifies divisive and polarizing content, arguing the design choice is linked to real-world unrest in multiple countries, and that the company had been unwilling to accept even small reductions in profit for the sake of safety. Her appearance was framed by UK media as directly feeding the committee's push to toughen the bill's provisions on algorithmic transparency and duty-of-care obligations toward younger users. TechKids Foundation cites this as a documented example of Haugen's advocacy translating U.S. congressional disclosures into a second country's legislative process, rather than as an independent finding of harm.
Testimony to the European Parliament Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection
Haugen appeared for nearly three hours before a joint session of European Parliament committees, including the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, as MEPs were negotiating the Digital Services Act. She told members that the DSA had the potential to become a global benchmark for platform regulation, urged mandatory public disclosure of how platforms collect data and rank content and advertising, and suggested Facebook could reduce amplification-linked harms by capping how far content can be reshared and by investing more in non-English-language moderation. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as a primary-source example of Haugen's advocacy directly shaping EU-level policy debate on platform design and transparency, distinct from her earlier U.S. and UK testimony.
Auditions Before the French Senate and National Assembly
On November 10, 2021, Haugen testified in Paris before two French Senate committees — Culture, Education and Communication, and European Affairs — and, the same day, before the National Assembly's Economic Affairs and Legal Affairs committees. French committee chairs described her disclosures as important input for lawmakers then shaping European digital-regulation rules, and the hearing was livestreamed on the Senate's own video platform. As with her U.S., UK, and EU appearances, the substance repeated her core claim: that Facebook's internal research had identified design-linked harms to some users, including younger ones, that leadership did not act on. TechKids Foundation cites this as documentation of Haugen's advocacy reaching a third national legislature within five weeks of her identity becoming public.
STUDIES
Beyond the Screen: Nonprofit Launch to Research and Reform Social Platform Design
Haugen launched Beyond the Screen, a nonprofit bringing together nonprofit leaders, academics, litigators, and technologists to study harms linked to social media design and to develop preventative standards platforms could adopt. The initiative was backed by a reported $50 million, ten-year commitment from Project Liberty's McCourt Institute and set out to build 'digital governance frameworks' rather than to publish a single study. Beyond the Screen's own site describes ongoing work mapping platform-design choices against a 'standard of care,' proposing data-access standards for outside researchers, and building simulated social-network tools to test design changes before platforms ship them. TechKids Foundation cites this as Haugen's shift from disclosure and testimony toward building longer-term accountability infrastructure.
Council for Responsible Social Media
Haugen joined the Council for Responsible Social Media, a cross-partisan initiative housed at the nonprofit Issue One and co-chaired by former House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt and former Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, as one of its listed information-integrity experts. The Council describes its focus as addressing mental-health, civic, and national-security harms it associates with social media design, and frames platform accountability as a bipartisan policy problem rather than a partisan one. Unlike Beyond the Screen, which Haugen founded, this is a coalition she lends her expertise to rather than leads. TechKids Foundation cites it as evidence that her post-testimony advocacy extended into ongoing, institutionally backed policy coalitions rather than ending with her initial disclosures.
Facebook Lacked Tools to Flag RSS-Linked Hate Speech in India, Whistleblower Documents Show
Reporting on internal Facebook documents Haugen disclosed to U.S. regulators and shared with a media consortium, this article describes gaps in the platform's non-English content-moderation systems in India, one of its largest markets. According to the documents, Facebook did not deploy automated Hindi-language classifiers for hate speech until 2020, and Bengali-language classifiers until 2021, years after the platform had scaled in those languages. The disclosed material also described an internal case study finding posts from pages linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) containing dehumanizing anti-Muslim narratives that the platform's systems struggled to catch, and separate findings on inauthentic accounts driving a large share of engagement on civic content in West Bengal. TechKids Foundation cites this as evidence of Haugen's disclosures extending beyond U.S.-focused claims into platform-design gaps affecting other countries' information environments.