Meta whistleblower says 'tens of millions' could die in the coming years if social media isn't overhauled

• In 2021, Frances Haugen leaked internal Meta documents that showed the company knew it caused harm.
• She told The Sunday Times that "tens of millions" will die if social media isn't overhauled.

Frances Haugen, the Meta whistleblower, told The Sunday Times that "tens of millions" will die if social media isn't overhauled.

She worked at Facebook until 2021, when The Wall Street Journal published documents that she leaked, known as "The Facebook Files."

They included research reports and employee discussions that showed that the company knew its platforms caused harm.

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For example, The Journal reported that Meta downplayed Instagram's effects on teenagers' mental health, and Facebook helped spread religious hatred in India.

Now Haugen has written a memoir in which she says social media is still damaging due to a continued lack of transparency, The Washington Post reported.

She writes that Meta's profits were contingent on "no one knowing how large the gap between Facebook's and Instagram's public narratives and the truth had grown," per The Post.

Haugen believes that the only way to change that is to overhaul our understanding of social media.

"The reality is that culture change is hard," she told The Sunday Times. "I view this book as part of how we build that consensus."

"A lot of people will die in the next 20 years if we don't solve this problem," she said, adding the figure would be "tens of millions." Haugen did not expand on the comment.

In 2018, United Nations investigators said Facebook "substantively contributed" to the genocide in Myanmar, Reuters reported. And Instagram made several policy changes after it was blamed for the suicide of a British teenager.

While Meta is coming under more scrutiny — last month it was handed a record-breaking $1.3 billion fine relating to data privacy — Haugen argues more needs to be done to stop it from spiraling out of control.

Meta did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.